


Undying

by ecphrasis



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 59,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: "The deathless ones will sweep you off to the world's end... where life will glide on in ease." - Homer, The Odyssey.Elrond Peredhel has finally arrived on the shore of the Undying Lands, but he cannot help but feel that he is a failure, as a lord, as a husband, as a father, as a man. He is content to live the rest of his days in obscurity, but when Maglor arrives, shipwrecked and half-starved on the shores of Valinor, Nerdanel and Maglor's wife beg him to advocate for the last of the Fëanorians, to prevent him from suffering the punishment of the Kinslayers. As he reveals his memories of Maglor, he reconciles with his wife, but will he manage to save Maglor from the vengeance of his kin?Please note that this work will contain mentions of sexual assault that may be traumatizing, and will also contain consensual scenes of an explicit nature. There will also be mentions of past violence, including murder.





	1. Chapter 1

The voyage westward is long. Upon the deep sea, with no islands for landmarks and only the stars and the sexton to determine their position, all feels stationary. The deck rolls beneath his feet, the clouds scud in ragged packs or build into immense thunderheads, but only the convex shape of the sails indicates their movement. If he stands belowdecks and shuts his eyes, he can imagine that the sea is a vast cradle, rocking him softly, ceaselessly. Or perhaps not a cradle, but a womb, engendered with the bright souls of the mariners who each day draw closer to the time when they will be delivered onto dry land. The rolling of the deck beneath him does not sicken him, but the sound of the waves grates at him.

Imladris was filled with sound, but that sound was birdsong and the wind in the trees and the hum of many people gathered under one roof, and the ring of horse-hooves on cobbles, and the rustle of books, and, before the disaster, the sweet, clear voices of his children. The ship echoes with the call of the sea. The waves threaten to overwhelm him, if not with water, then with noise. He cannot think over the sound of them slapping the sides of the ship; he does not want to think anything worth thinking. What would he think about? His city, now all but abandoned? His sons, still vengeance-bound and wandering the world, looking to stamp out whatever trace of evil they can find? His daughter, who had sent him news of her pregnancy shortly before he embarked on this, his final journey? By now, perhaps the child would be born. He had seen that she would have a son. Would his own sons ever return to him? Would he ever touch his children again? Would he hear them talk to him? Arwen was beyond his reach, each breath of wind sundered them further. He thinks of her, in her birthing bed, without him. He would not have helped her to deliver her children if she had wed an elf; after all, he did not deliver his own, but he could have been present. He could have sung a Song of Protection, and offered guidance, and-

“My lord,” Glorfindel says. “The captain asked me to tell you that we can expect to make landfall before dawn tomorrow.”

“Glor,” he sighs. He looks out over the railing of the ship, out at the seawater churning in the boat’s wake. Earlier, a pod of dolphins had flown along beside them, chattering in their bright language and leaping bodily from the water. Now only the grey of the water and the white of the sea foam follows them. The sky too is grey, dark with the promise of squall or storm. “Glor,” he says again. “What am I supposed to do in Valinor?”

“You are a great lord,” Glorfindel says. “You will have a place in Aman.”

“But what am I supposed to do as lord? I have no head for peacetime; I am a War Lord. I have only ever pulled my joy and happiness from the fabric of despair.”

“If you are unready for the silver shore, what made you seek it out?” Glorfindel asks. The former Lord of Imladris twists the simpler of the two rings on his fingers, the plain golden band.

“I had to,” he says. “The four years after the war were the longest in my life. Even the Siege of Barad-Dûr was easier to endure. I have to know if she- I wonder sometimes... What if she could find healing only in the Halls of Mandos? What if I disembark from this ship and find my wife dead?” The words were faltering, uncertain, and Glorfindel touches his shoulder. “Glorfindel,” he says. He looks at his friend, at his bright blue, Noldorin eyes, and he voices the one question that pounded through his body with each beat of his heart. “In the stories, it is the fool who chooses immortality. It is the selfish bastard, the unwise child. They are punished for presumption. Glorfindel, what if I leave this boat and find myself alone? My daughter is lost to me forever. What if my wife and sons are too? Glorfindel, I could not- I could not bear it.”

“Elrond, you only harm yourself by entertaining those thoughts. My friend, my lord, your wife went westward to be cured. She chose not to fade. She wished to live. She would not have entered Mandos after all she suffered.”

“Even if she didn’t,” he says. “Even if she is hale and healed and unbroken, how can I touch her, Glorfindel? How am I supposed to look upon her body, I who stitched her wounds closed, I who bore witness to my failure as her husband, I who saw what they did to her, I, who let it happen?”

“Valinor is not just the land of healing for others, my lord,” Glorfindel says. “You too can be healed from your agonies. The Valar will make you whole again. You will not bear the burden of your guilt and pain and terror.” Elrond looks westward, beyond the swelling sail and the rough waves and the grey salt sea. His eyesight is not as good as an elf’s, but nonetheless he sees, on the horizon line, a lone seagull wheeling above the waves. Birds do not stray far into open water.

“Soon we will make landfall,” he says. “Until then, I would like to be alone.” Glorfindel dips his head. He stands at the starboard side of the ship, looking northwards. Perhaps the Helcaraxë had been directly north him, before the sundering of worlds. He imagines the difficult passage Turgon’s host endured, the screams and the terror and the knowledge that for months, there would be no sure footing. Glorfindel had told him of the journey, once. Galadriel had never spoken of it. He wonders whether he would have had the strength to force himself across the grinding ice, and whether his grandmother, Idril Celebrindal, had ever come close to slipping into the churning, ice-choked sea.

For a time everything is still. Then, he hears the pad of bare feet, and beside him, the Ringbearer appears.

“We are close,” he says.

“Yes,” Elrond responds. He is aware that his voice sounds tired; he cannot seem to make himself appear an imposing elf-lord. It was always a sham, the hobbit may as well bear witness to that as anyone. “Soon we will land.”

“I wish I could have said goodbye to Aragorn,” the hobbit says, and Elrond clutches the railing with white-knuckled fingers.

“It is a hard thing to leave one’s friends behind,” he says. Elf-wisdom is often only a statement of the obvious.

“Yes,” Frodo says. “But I suppose you’d know too. When I wore the Ring- it was like I saw through His eyes. I felt things I never thought to feel. I have heard your wife-“

“No,” Elrond says, flatly. “No. My wife is not a point of discussion. My wife-“ he thinks of her, gasping in agony, her wounds open and pus-filled, blood welling up from vicious gashes, her eyes wild with fear, and his own voice, weak and ineffective in the face of her suffering. “My wife-“ how long since he had thought of her as she had been, back when they had been glad together, back when the world was theirs? She used to twine her arms around his neck, when they were alone, or when Glorfindel or Erestor or Gildor or one of their other close friends was present, and kiss his cheek with her soft, pink lips. Did his voice crack on the final syllable? “My wife is no business of yours.” The hobbit appears suitably chastened, and he does not speak as he looks out across the waves. After a while, Elrond takes himself below, to his cabin, and forces himself to lie down. No dreams come, and he is grateful for it.

* * *

He hears them lower the sails, and then he hears them begin to row, steadily, into port. He dresses himself in his most formal clothes, and binds a star on his immortal brow. It is his most precious gem, it has been hung on the Nauglamír, the necklace the dwarves had made to house a Silmaril for Thingol of Doriath, and in its depths a flicker of the Silmaril’s reflected light still burns. Maglor had given it to him when he had come of age, along with a hero’s sword and a fine horse and a suit of armor beaten half from silver, half from iron, in the way of the elf-smiths. It gleamed when he wore it. Those were the gifts of a father to his son and heir, the traditional war-gifts. Elros too had received them. They had thought themselves young princelings, young Fëanorians. But not even Maedhros had ever suggested that they take the Oath, and bind themselves to the Doom of that House. Elrond wonders whether he would have taken it, if one of the Brothers had offered to teach him the words. He thinks he would have. After all, what other kinfolk had he had?

* * *

Imagine a waterfall, after the cataract. The water bubbles and sloshes between the banks, but it moves more slowly, traveling downhill, yes, but without the urgency of the rapids and the great drop to the shattering depths of the river. It is propelled from behind, not drawn ahead. It meanders into oxbows and cuts into silt and forest and farmland. Eventually, it runs into the sea. But immediately after the cataract, the water is not quite sure it is water. It froths into foam, a steam rises up, clouds line the bottom of the falls, if they are tall enough. A fish flung over the edge might wonder, for a second, if it has become a bird by some chance of the gods. It sucks in a breath, expecting water to glide over its gills, but instead air scrapes against it and it gasps anew, its body burning from lack of breath. It twists, and finds the water, and pauses for a moment in wonder, before it forgets, and swims off, downstream, towards the vast ocean. That is how Elrond feels, breathless, uncertain what god's trick has touched him, when he steps from the boat onto the immortal silver shore of Valinor.

Once, after he had sworn allegiance to his cousin, Gil-Galad, but before the War of Wrath and the Choice, he and his brother had followed a river inland. It was a scouting mission; he could remember it, somewhat, the fear and the terror and most of all the excitement. Killing was only half-real to him then. Death was an arrow-bolt, loosed from an impartial bow. He hid in shadows; he shot at shadows. His targets were orcs, ugly and gruesome and not at all elf-like, or only a little. He knew that some of them had been elves once, of course. In later years he would drink and drink and drink and name himself Kinslayer and Murderer and consider hurling himself off a cliff, because he had finally sat down and thought about what he was killing, and where their souls had come from, and he had realized and been horrified. It had taken Gil-Galad's encouragement to yank him from that bout of depression. That had been after Elros’ death.

But in their trip inland, they followed the river. Which one? He remembers crossing a mountain range, a small one, but still. He remembers a bright forest uncorrupted, and a den of wolves with a dead mother. He had tried to raise the wolf pups, but only one had survived, and it was skittish and only rarely appeared once it was weaned. He had come upon its mangled body during one of his trips.

But he and Elros had been scouting something. And he had seen the fish leaping upstream to get to their spawning grounds, and he had wondered how they knew where to go, and, eating one, he felt a vague sense of unease. Where was his home? Sirion? Amon Ereb? If he had been told to go home, what place would summon him?

In later years, he dwelt in a valley couched in the midst of the vast range of the Misty Mountains, and when he went out riding, he always knew which way to turn his horse’s head. But by then Elros had been dead for many years, and most of the elves left alive could not remember him. Imladris had seemed, sometimes, like a placeholder for somewhere more permanent.

Elrond, dressed in his most formal robes, the sigil of his House, a vine twined around a tree, at whose top three bright stars gleamed, steps off the gangplank onto the silver shore of the Undying Lands. Only a few elves are visible, in the distance, but Elrond sees the Herald of Manwë and feels the pang of resentment, familiar and uncomfortable as a stone in his boot, shoot through him as he dips his head.

“Welcome, Brother,” the Herald says, and Elrond sees that a change had been effected in Mithrandir. The old man had been transformed into a youth, strong and bright-eyed and beautiful. He has seen flickers of this, his true from, when the wizard extended his power, but the immediate change is overwhelming, almost unimaginable. The two Maia embrace, and kiss each other’s cheeks. Mithrandir speaks something soft and low, in a strange tongue that seemed half-music, and the Herald responds in kind, then turns his attention to the others.

“Welcome,” the Herald says to the assembled company. “We have long awaited your arrival. Artanis Nerwen,” he pauses, looking at Galadriel. “Goldtress,” he said, translating the woman’s name from Sindarin to Quenya. “Many have grieved your absence. All will rejoice in your return. But we all regret the absence of your husband.” The woman dips her head, low, humble. Elrond remembers how, in the past, she had not been willing to bow before an image of the Ainur. He had thought it pride, and anger at the Valar, but perhaps she was, secretly, one of the Orthodox, who did not believe in making images of corporeal beings. “Your father and mother await you, and your brothers." Galadriel smiles, and she begins to climb up into the city. Elrond supposes that it must be much as she remembers it. The Herald turned his attention to the two Ring-Bearers, and speaks to them in their own tongue, which Elrond does not quite understand. The tongues of men spread too quickly and vary too much, even for him. He sees them smile their wide, children’s smiles. Do they know with whom they speak? Do they understand? The Herald is not offended, in any case. Mithrandir leaves with them, one hobbit’s hand in each of his young, strong hands, and at last the Herald of Manwë turns to him.

“Elrond,” he says, and Elrond bends his knees and bows his head. “You might have been King of the Noldor. You might have been King of the Sindar. Your brother took a crown, after all. But here you are, lord of a lost valley. Elrond,” his voice is like thunder and bell chimes and a bird’s high call above both sounds. “You are welcome here. Your people have mourned for your absence. Here, you will find home.” Elrond finds that when he tried to gaze into the Maiar’s eyes, he sees only dark pinpricks of flames burning where eyes should be. His body shivers despite the heat of the robes, and his feet turn to ice. “My Lady has requested to speak with you.”

“I would be honored,” he says. He has heard that new arrivals are punished for their sins before they are permitted to enjoy life in Valinor. He expects it would take rather a long time to punish him for his flaws. He wonders how much it will hurt; he remembers hiding from Maglor’s painful stick with Elros. His brother could be induced to give himself up for punishment, but he himself has always been more sensitive to pain. He dislikes it, and hides from it. Hence he had run from mortality without stopping to consider-

“Consider what?” The Herald asks. His voice is blank, devoid of judgement or emotion. “It was a choice, not a test. There was no right or wrong answer. The Valar gave you a gift, the ability to determine your allegiance freely.” Elrond thinks on his wife’s suffering, but he suppresses the thoughts quickly. Nevertheless, he sees Eönwë flinch at the image of Celebrían in her rags, bleeding and-

He has learned to avoid thinking, when he needs to. He follows the Herald dutifully through the deserted city streets. He wonders, in the depths of his mind, if Eonwë always speaks the truth. If the Herald hears these thoughts, he makes no mention of them. Elrond turns around to see the ship gleaming in the darkness. He increases his pace, just slightly, so that he does not lose Eönwë amidst the strange city. By the time the dawn light touches the shore of Valinor, he and Eönwë are deep into the mountains. Each step seems to take him a normal distance, but the mountains were scarcely visible when they landed. Still, he does not feel winded or tired. He wonders where, in this new world, his wife is, or even if she is alive. Looking at the Herald, he has a brief memory of the end of the War of the Jewels, of Melkor cast down and Eönwë’s face gleaming and terrible as he bound the Ainur hand and foot. He thinks of the day the sun wandered without guidance, and how the news came that Morgoth had abducted Arien-

“Even from that, there is healing,” Eönwë says. “Even that wound will close, eventually.”

“My wife,” he says. He is surprised at how desperate his voice sounds, how like a child’s. “Celebrían, do you know-“

“Patience,” Eönwë says with a slight smile. “Patience.” When Elrond raises his eyes, he sees he is at the base of a tall tower, and when he shuts them in wonderment and opens them again, he finds himself in a garden. The air is clear and pure, and smells of jasmine and honeysuckle, and the sunlight slants against the trees, and falls into a gleaming golden pool. He realizes, suddenly, that he has seen a sight similar to this before.

Galadriel’s entrances had always been marked by glowing light and the brightness of the sun. The woman he sees is tall and radiant, and when he bends his knees and bows his head, he can feel the burning of her eyes.

“My child,” she says. Her voice is like the voice of a cataract, powerful and subtle and overlayered with bright droplets of joy. He bends his head, he wonders whether he is supposed to press his forehead to the ground. In the courts of the Haradrim, men lay themselves flat on the earth in reverence to their kings. How should he honor Elbereth? “Rise and walk with me.” He stumbles when he rises; his eyes are burning, as thought he has tried to stare directly at the sun, and he is terrified to touch her arm, as she indicates he is to do. She draws him to her, and he feels inside her body the massive swell of Music. Her skin is one she can shed at will. She can dissolve and reincarnate herself without any trouble. Touching her is like touching fire-made-flesh, but he does not burst into flame.

Her gardens are overwhelmed with flowers and trees, and the light touches everything and reflects on everything and seems almost blinding. The mountains are absent, and he realizes suddenly that he is above them, high in the air, and it is not cold, nor hot, but a pleasant heat with a thin breeze snaking between the trees.

“Barádâ,” he says. It is the old form of her name, from the old language that even Maglor did not grow up speaking. He feels like an out-of-place child. He does not know what to call her. “Forgive me.”

“You are not here for punishment, Star-Dome,” she says. “I have watched over you since your birth. I saw you when you splashed in the cave, before Maglor named you Elrond, when you had another name. I have guarded you, and cherished you, my child. I am glad to see you.”

“Did you see what they did to my wife?” The accusation leaps from his lips before he can stop it, or perhaps the words only echo through his head. He sees his wife as he has seen her every day for five hundred years. Before the flight to Middle Earth, before the Kinslaying, there was no word in Quenya for rape, so he switches to Sindarin, but the word he thinks comes in the Black Tongue of Mordor, and since no one can hide their thoughts from Varda, it is that word that escapes him. The foul syllables penetrate the garden, and he expects a shadow to fall, as it did in Imladris, when Mithrandir spoke the words etched on the Ring. The Black Tongue has the power to strip away enchantment. But no change occurs, and Varda looks at him.

“Did you think that word has power here? Power over me? Do you not know that my starlight was visible even in Mordor? Do you not think my sun shines everywhere? I know what happened to your wife, I saw her suffering and I wept for it. But not even I can shape every event. She was not violated by my will, and I am sorry. Evil sometimes touches good, despite the light’s power. Even Morgoth violated Arien.”

The word she uses for the rape comes from a healer’s word for the creeping rot that eats up a wound and leads to death. It infuriates him, unreasonably. He repeats the word, tasting the contours of its meaning, his anger a black, honed blade in his heart. He can see his Celebrían writhing away from him, her eyes blank with terror. She had thought him- she had thought he had harmed her. In his more unlordly moods, he had inspected every memory of their copulation - he could only do so in clinical terms - and wondered if she had ever been unwilling. Certainly there had been times when she was angry with him and he had kissed her, and she had forgiven him for a few hours, but had she really? Had he ever- but even he did not like to apply that word to himself.

“I will use your word for it then,” Varda says. The Black Tongue sounds almost meaningless in her mouth, dark and harsh but powerless, like the faint odor of evaporated urine. Varda looks at him, and his memory of the word seems to fade. He had never spoken it in Imladris, to do so would be to weaken his defenses, but he had thought it, ceaselessly, and clutched it to his chest as a reminder of the evil he had allowed to exist and overcome his wife. Drained of its potent power, the word seems ridiculous, unreal. The healer’s term for the deed seems more truthful. A creeping rot may be fatal, but may not. A skilled surgeon could cut it away and leave healthy tissue to regrow.

“Is she alive?” He asks. “Is she here?”

“She is happy,” Varda says. “She dwells in an open house by the sea, near to Elwing, and she grows a garden and consults with the high lords and ladies of the Elves, and she dreams of you. Would you like to go to her?”

“I-“ he pauses, he thinks of how he failed her, first in failing to protect her, then in failing to heal her, then in losing her children. “I do not know if she will want me. I would not, if I was her.”

“Would you not?” Varda asks him. “Did you tire of her?”

“No,” he says. “No, but I let her be hurt-“

“And she is healed. It took years for the healing to occur. She spent many decades with Lady Nienna, and many more in the glades of Lórien, but she is whole now. You too can be whole, if you choose to be. Will you see her? You do not have to. You could stay here, if you like, for a time.” Despite himself, his eyes wander over the gardens, to the mirror. “That is where my husband views the world,” Nienna said. “Would you look?”

“I dare not.” He wonders what he would see in Gondor. Mortal women often die in childbirth.

“She has a son,” Varda says. “And he is called Eldarion.” He could laugh at the absurdity of the name, if it didn’t make him want to weep. He does laugh, at his mortal daughter’s child named Elf-son, at her choice, at his own. When the laughter turns to tears and he collapses before the Queen of Starlight, he scarcely notices. When he lifts his head, his eyes tear-stained, he sees her burning like a brand. When he lifts his eyes again, she is gone, and he is by the sea, and he hears the shattering of a plate, and a familiar gasp, and then his wife’s voice calling his name, and then he falters and falls again, and sinks to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

The sand beneath his hands is still warm from the sun, and it is soft and pleasant against his skin, and there are no jagged stones to bite into his flesh. He imagines sleeping on it, and awakening to sand in his hair, and matted on his face. The thought is restful. Then he begins to hear again, and the waves pound beside his head, but they are only waves. He realizes, suddenly, that the part of him that heard Ulmo’s voice and longed for Valinor is sated now, like a full stomach after a day’s labor. He feels like a soldier in lockstep with his companions. It is alien to feel this _belonging_.

Then he hears his own name, and he looks up from the sand and sees a silver figure flying down the short incline of the grassy hill towards him. On Middle Earth, grass could not grow so close to sand and be so verdant.

The feet are bare and quicksilver in their flight. The legs are partially obscured by a light, flowing blue dress, the hips and stomach and shoulders blur past him, and the face freezes the blood in his veins to ice. He scuttles, unceremoniously, like a crab, backwards into the sea. It is like seeing a vision, a nightmare, come to life. She looks different, larger, more solid, less like a wisp of cloud, more like a bar of molten metal. Her blue eyes blaze in her face; he has had this dream before, he knows what happens next. Her jaw unhinges to reveal a triple row of serrated teeth, and her skin peels away and she becomes a thing that eats him whole. It is one of his more terrifying nightmares, although it is not so painful to endure as the dream of his wife’s wounds, which in truth is little more than a memory of what he bore witness to. She has stopped, in puzzlement, and he pants in the water. It is only slightly cold, but he feels his testes drawn up into his body. Fear or cold or something else? Whatever it is, it is the opposite of arousal. A shrinking, a diminishment. Has she ever had this effect on him before? Dimly, he hears a pounding beyond that of the water, and he realizes his heart is beating quickly enough to leap from his chest.

“Elrond?” She asks. Her voice is uncertain now, and it falters, slightly, as it leaves her lips. He decides he is truly awake. As gracefully as he can manage, he rises to his feet. She glows in the light spilling from the house. A man’s silhouette is framed in the doorway. His heart skips a beat, then another, and if possible, more blood drains from his face. He feels cold all over, despite the warm night air. He drips water onto the sand.

“Celebrían,” he says, with all the dignity he can muster, soaked, having crawled backwards into the ocean like a man gone insane.

“Elrond,” she gasps, and she crosses the space between them in a flash, and she throws her arms around his neck, and kisses his cheek with her soft lips. Last time he held her, she had burst into tears, and in between her sobs, she had screamed no, over and over again. He pushes her away, almost roughly, and he stares at her round, wide eyes. They are questioning, open, blue as the sky. “Glorfindel said you were on the ship, but he saw you leave with Eönwë, and then you were simply gone.” Her voice is too loud, too sudden. He feels faint and weary, and it is only by drawing strength from his Ring that he can manage to avoid collapsing. She is nervous, she is treating him like a stranger. Maybe he is. Maybe he interrupted something. The male figure has vanished inside her house. Elves have been known, or so he has heard, to forsake former spouses for new ones in Valinor. Could he blame her? No. Not after what happened to her. He is surprised she was willing to touch him. Her hand brushes his shoulder and he jumps, despite himself. Normally he can control every shudder in his body, even around her, unless he is drunk or overcome by lust. Admittedly, around her, with her, the latter was never very difficult to accomplish. He feels like his head has whirled off to a different world. “I had started to wonder if you’d entered Mandos,” she says.

“It was only a day,” he responds. The evening light is cheery. His voice sounds rough, even to his own ears.

“Elrond,” she says. “My love, it’s been a year.”

* * *

He knows, intellectually, that what she says is true. He is no thinner, but he is starving, and very thirsty. He knows that  
in Valinor time runs differently, especially around the Valar. Even in Imladris, time could slide past, its passage unnoticed. Still, how could he lose a whole year and not realize? She offers him water, and he swallows half a bucket before he realizes it is sweet and cold and the most delicious drink to ever cross his lips, better even than miruvor. Next, he wolfs down the food she has on hand, eggs and venison and bread baked by Findis herself, he is informed. He watches her, as he eats, and she watches him. A part of him knows he should apologize, but he doesn’t know where to begin. Alphabetically, maybe. Or else in orders of grievousness. Still, starting with “I apologize, my wife, for failing to prevent your rape,” is guaranteed to ruin the fragile silence between them, and he cannot talk to her. So he eats her food, and when he has drunk more water, he collapses onto her bed.

It is only when he drops into sleep that he wonders whether she wanted him to sleep with her. How, the snide part of him questions. It doesn’t matter. His eyes are too weighed down for him to consider finding an answer.

* * *

In earlier days, there had been bears dwelling in the caves around Imladris. Elves tend to trust all creatures, even the ones large enough to eat them, but Elrond ordered them shot. There would be children in the valley, and soon, and bears had been known to eat elf children, albeit under the Shadow’s influence. He himself had ridden up to a she-bear’s cave, and when she returned from a day of foraging, he shot her in her beady, glinting eye from a vantage point high in a tree.

The blow started her and she stumbled backwards, roaring in pain, but after crashing through the undergrowth and scoring her gleaming claws deep into the earth, she collapsed and lay unmoving. It was a good shot, through tree branches and shadow. He was good with all weapons, even the ones the Fëanorians had not favored. The cub had wailed, and the part of him that was a healer felt his soul contract. But he was a War-Lord, he told himself, and besides, a few years prior there had been a long winter. If there was another one, and he left this bear cub alive, it might eat a needed sheep or cow or even an elfling, assuming it survived at all.

The bear cub had been born in the spring, and it was round and tumbly and it nuzzled at its mother, confused. He picked it up, by the scruff of its neck, and it hung, limp and obedient, in his arms.

“Yavanna,” he murmured. “Forgive me.” And he had twisted its neck, to keep its fine pelt in tact. He had acted as executioner for Gil-Galad by then; he had slain slain other elves. But the bear had only been going home; it had done nothing to deserve his cruelty. He could still feel the twist of bones beneath his hands.

He awakes with a start, in an unfamiliar bed, and the part of him that always thinks the worst suggests that he has, at last, been captured by the enemy. He stretches cautiously, and when his fingers find his knife’s handle he breathes a sigh of relief. The memories of the previous night flood through him, and he cringes to recall how he had stumbled backwards into the ocean like a moon-crazed man. What must his wife think of him?

He realizes she has undressed him, because he is stripped of his thick robes and is dressed in only his thin undergarments. To lift him, she must have had help.

“You’re awake,” she comments, and he meets her steely gaze. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” he says. His throat is dry and raspy. “Sorry,”

“For what?” She asks, sounding genuine. “Sorry for last night. I saw you had a visitor, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Is that all?” She asks, and his heart sinks. Is he prepared to do this now?

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry for what happened in the Redhorn Pass. I’m sorry I did not go with you, I’m sorry I could not-“

“Elrond,” she says. “There is nothing for you to be sorry for. There is nothing for me to forgive.”

“But I let you-“

“No,” she says. “Husband,”

“Am I?” He asks. She stops, and stares at him.

“Are you my husband?” She asks.

“I would not hold it against you to have-“

“Eärendilion, do you remember when we swore vows to each other? I certainly do. I seem to recall swearing to always have you as husband, by Manwë and Elbereth. Do you think I take such oaths lightly?”

“Of course not Cel,” he says. “But I broke my vow to you first.”

“Elrond,” she says. She sits beside him, and takes his face in her hands, and presses her lips to his lips. “Husband,” she says again. “By Elbereth and Manwë I swear to you, I do not hold our oath as broken. I swear I do not blame you for what happened.”

“How can you not?” He asks. “Even I know that it was my fault, my blindness, that allowed the orcs to dwell within my realm.”

“The Misty Mountains are a comfort to the creatures of darkness. The caves and caverns work to obscure the evil in their depths. You could not have known. You did not know. What was done to me, what I suffered, was terrible. I would have perished had I remained in Middle Earth much longer, but you saved me by sending me here, even though it meant a painful sundering.” She kisses him, softly, and he feels her body beneath his hands.

“How can you want this, after what was done to you?” He asks. “When I look at you I see your wounds livid against your skin. Your hair is a silver mat of blood, your wounds weep and your eyes are wild. How can you stand to touch me, after how you were touched?”

“I have healed,” she says. “First I went to Lórien, and I lay for a time in his woods, half-dreaming, and I gave the worst of my fears and dreams to him, and I relived what happened over and over, until, like a sharp rock touched many times over many years, the edges dulled to smoothness, and I could think of what had happened without ripping my wounds open. Then I went to Nienna, and I wove in her hall of sorrows, and I put my pain and my anguish and my black hate into a tapestry of the deed, and when I burned it, I came down, out of the lands of the Valar into Tirion, and I lived for a time with Finrod Felagund, and then with Findis, and then with Turgon. Now I live here, and Glorfindel too dwells with me, for we are close to Turgon and the former lords of Gondolin.”

“I wish I could have healed you,” he says. She smiles at him, her eyes soft and bright.

“Even Lórien could not instantly ease my hurts. Mandos offered me healing in his Halls, and I thought of accepting. Death would have been welcome, and I knew the path of Lórien would be painful and terrifying. I wanted to forget my woes, and step into oblivion. But I wanted even more than that to be able to look upon you again.”

“Is what you see worth it?” He asks. “In your absence I lost all three of our children, made half my people believe I had sired a fourth with a mortal woman, and I have diminished to the standing of a commoner. I have nothing to offer you.”

“Elrond,” she says. She sighs, and wraps her arms around his frame. “My love, what you are is enough.” It takes a teardrop falling on his hand for him to realize she is crying, but when he goes to brush her cheeks with his finger he realizes that his eyes too are wet, and he finds himself sobbing as he has not since she was wounded, or, perhaps, since Gil-Galad perished. As the dawn light seeps through the high-windowed house, he sinks into his wife’s arms, and he understands, for the first time in his life, how in the stories some elves dissolve into pools of tears.

* * *

It is almost pleasant to be in this quiet corner of the world. Sometimes he imagines that his children are away, Arwen in Lothlórien and his sons in Gondor, studying, and he himself in some warm portion of Sirion, with his wife and closest friend.

When he returned, Glorfindel had embraced him and offered, very tactfully, to move into Turgon’s Household, and give them privacy, but he enjoys the elf’s presence, and Celebrían too is fond of him.

On occasion, a few members of the nearby royal houses come to visit. Findis comes often, and Ecthelion of Gondolin, Lord of the Fountains. At times Glorfindel had spoken of him with wistfulness. Elrond hides from these visitors, but when he hears the songs of Ecthelion, he is tempted to reveal himself, if only to enjoy them the more. When he comes, Celebrían always seems to find an excuse to leave him and Glorfindel alone.

“He visits because I am the wife of Turgon’s heir, and he wants to ensure my happiness,” she says, but she says it with a dancing smile and bright eyes. Elrond listens to the songs he sings, some with words, some without, and smiles himself.

Turgon himself comes, and Galadriel. He meets with the Lady, but it is strange for him to see her. She is like a shadow of herself without the power of Nenya. She looks weary, though he knows he looks worse. He realizes how rare it was in Middle Earth for her to be parted from Celeborn.

"I do not know if he will come West at all," she had said. "He still harbors much anger against the Noldor, and Fëanor's kin, for what happened in Doriath, and then in Sirion. Even his marriage to me did not cool his hatred. But he told me he has no wish to be sundered for all eternity, neither from me, nor from the land he loves."

Once, Indis arrives. She brings with her a vast retinue who camp on the beach, and she stays for a few days, and discusses affairs. His wife, he comes gradually to realize, has become a great lady in her own right, and occasionally she and Glorfindel ride down into Tirion to sit in judgement in High King Finarfin's Council. The justice they dispense is rarely violent. There are crimes of passion, even in Aman, but there is no crime of rape, and rarely of murder. Occasionally there will be theft or bribery or negligence, more frequently, squabbles and hasty insults. When he asks her about what is discussed, she only smiles.

"There is a seat for you on the Council, Husband, when you wish it. Until then, you may live in my house and eat my provender, and provide me with an attractive form to gaze upon, when I grow weary of my work."

* * *

He sits on her veranda and overlooks the sea. He can hear the voice of his mother inside the house, but he has asked Celebrían to lie and say that he has still not returned.

“Your father sees everything,” she had protested, but he had waved her off.

“They abandoned me and my brother; I owe them nothing.”

“Elrond,” she had sighed, but so far he has been left in peace.

Peace.

The word is foreign to him, although at great cost he kept war away from Imladris. The absence of war did not mean all was blissful though. Even in the easiest years he had to constantly reinforce his Girdle, and sing Songs of protection and deception, and draw from the reserves of his strength, and few years indeed were easy. There was always a battle to fight somewhere, if he looked hard enough. There was always another body to stick with his sword, always another orc to run through. The work of killing had only brief reprieves. But now it is over, at last, and he has no cause to wear a sword at his hip or a knife in his belt. He has no wars to worry about, or Songs to sing, or traitors to execute. Is this boredom peace? Is this feeling of uselessness relaxation? In a different life, he supposes he would simply fall into bed with his wife. Even for elves, five hundred years without release is a long time, and the newly reunited tend to secret themselves away like newlyweds. But he cannot bring himself to touch her, to place his hands were, formerly, orcs had placed theirs. When he looks at her he sees, as though with double vision, his wife writhing in terror in the Ward of Healing, struggling to escape from him. In the end, he had been forced to summon a female healer, because his voice seemed to drive her mad. So how is he supposed to touch her?

“I do wish we knew where Elrond is,” his mother says. “I suppose the Valar will have much to say to him about his life in Ennorath, but I would dearly love to see him.”

“I am certain you will when he is ready, Lady Elwing,” his wife says. “Until then, prayer is our best option. I too long to see him, to speak with him, to touch him, but while he is absent we must wait.”

“It must be hard for you, my dear,” Elwing says. “Especially without your children.”

“Yes,” his wife says. They have not talked about Arwen yet, but she knows. Everyone knows. Her voice is tender, a lamb’s voice. Elrond can tell his wife has no desire to discuss Arwen, but his mother forges ahead, careless of the soft sharpness of her voice.

“When I found out about Elros’ choice I was furious, and wounded. I blamed myself for abandoning my sons; but in truth I did not expect to survive either way, and I wanted to prevent the Fëanorians from defiling the Silmaril. I left my children with a nurse and fled oceanward, but once you have gone west there is no return. I never saw my sons as men; I did not see their weddings, I missed their children’s births. My husband saw Elros’ funeral from afar. After that I spent many years in Lórien, dreaming of the lands I still called home.”

“Elrond spoke with me about Elros’ death,” his wife says. “He said it was like a lightning bolt that shears away part of a cliff-face, and leaves you to climb the bare rock without handholds, with ash and dust raining around you.”

“He has a poetic soul, I have heard.” Elwing says. He can imagine his wife smiling demurely into her goblet of expensive wine. Why does she insist on entertaining strangers in her house?

“He never truly recovered. For many years, Elros was the only kin he had. I think his brother’s death deeply unsettled him, and since then he has wondered whether he made the right choice in immortality. I think he questions even our marriage.” He turns away, towards the sea, and tries to drown out her words. They cut into him like a sword cuts into a criminal’s neck. Is she right?

He is still sitting in the veranda, looking at the sea, when his wife approaches him with a goblet of wine. She kneels at his feet, and rests her head on his knee, sitting between his legs, her back to him. It takes enormous strength to avoid flinching away from her touch.

“My head aches from my braids; won’t you undo them?”

“I’m not sure-“

“It’s an elaborate style; I’ll have to summon my maid from her room if I want them undone, and it's her evening away, and they’re hurting me.”

“I’ll take them out,” he says. “Your hair is beautiful like this, but it is even lovelier long and loose about your back.” The compliment flows like water from his lips. It is one he has given her before, and often, but not in a while, not since before the Redhorn- he finds the key braid and unknots it, and begins the process of unraveling her hair. Each strand is delicate, perfect, molten silver. It is as glimmering as sunlight, and in the evening light of the sunset it sits on her head like a wreath of bright flame. The waves lap against the shore, but in the time he has dwelt with her in her house, he has grown used to the monotony of the sound. He has the first braid undone; she sighs as he runs his fingers through her hair.

“I missed you,” she says. “My maiden is a dear soul, but she has no tenderness. She tortures my scalp putting my hair up and letting it down. But you never hurt me, Elrond.” Is this how she intends to seduce him into her bed? Does he want her to? Is he a bastard for even thinking of her that way, wounded as she is by what was done to her?

“It is haste that leads her to hurt you,” he says. “But I have no wish to hurry through any action that lets me touch you.” The words sound stilted even to him; they are a line he has used before, to great success. How is it possible that here, in Valinor, they are stuck participating in identical conversations to those they had back home, in Imladris?

“I think that was once true,” she says. “But no more. You cannot stand to touch me, Elrond, that is plain for me to see. You touch me and in the shadow of your hand you see an orc’s raised claw.” He unpins her center braid, and half her hair comes tumbling down, now bound only in loose braids.

“What if I do?” He asks. “What if I can not touch you for fear of harming you?”

“You are a kind lord, Elrond. You are often wise. But not even you know everything.”

“I’m not a lord,” he says, and she sighs as he undoes the last tight braid. He could leave her to undo the rest of her hair herself, but it is comfortable on the veranda, watching the sea to the east, and she is warm and solid at his feet. He combs his fingers through her hair, teasing out the snarls, and when all the knots are undone, he runs his fingers lightly against her scalp. She shudders at the touch, but even he knows that it is from enjoyment. He runs his hands through her hair, and down to her neck. The birds of evening sing. The air is sweet scented, like honeysuckle flowers and fresh dew.

“Elrond,” she sighs. “Elrond.” His heart seems to begin beating when she says his name in her soft, gentle, pleasing way. The blood that sat in his veins like stagnant water begins to flow again, as though aware of a waterfall in the distance. He touches her, lightly, as though she might vanish beneath his hands. When he traces the contours of her cheek with his thumb, she turns to face him. “Do you want to lie with me?” She asks. Her question is neutral. Not fuck, not make love. Somewhere in the middle ground, somewhere where propriety could exist. He opens his mouth, uncertain of what his answer will be. Yes, my wife, I have never wanted anything more than that. No, my darling, I am still so afraid.

He opens his mouth; perhaps he intends to kiss her, or kiss her farewell. But the steward of the house, a child Aman-born and still young, a member of Turgon’s household, steps onto the porch. Celebrían does not move from her place between his legs, and the boy, it seems, has enough manners to pretend to see nothing.

“My lady,” he says. He casts a look at him, and Elrond wonders what he thinks of him, a dark stranger, haggard and severe. “High King Finarfin has a message for you.”

“Send it in, then,” she says. The steward bows and vanished into the shadows.

“Lax training,” Elrond says. “He ought to have brought you the message.”

“And you say you’re not a lord,” she says, with a laugh. He kisses her forehead, and some of the tension in his muscles relaxes. He breaths, and his lungs inflate with sweet, pure air.

“Celebrían?” It is a male voice, clear like river water, deep as a bronze bell. She rises instantaneously, and he follows her lead.

“High King,” she says. “I was not aware you had come, or I would have welcomed you properly. My steward implied a message had arrived, not you yourself.”

“No matter, this visit is irregular in any respect.” He turns from her to Elrond, and Elrond sees with a shock of recognition that his sons have identical eyes to those of their kinsman. “This must be the erstwhile Lord Elrond of Imladris. I was not aware you had returned from your consultation with Queen Varda.”

“High King,” he says. “It is an honor.”

“And for me as well, Kinsman,” he says. “I have heard many stories of your deeds in Middle Earth.”

“All unremarkable compared with yours,” he says, and Finarfin laughs.

“You fought the Shadow and survived; I returned to Valinor. You must come to Court and be presented. I would be honored to offer you a place in my Household, not the least because you are my granddaughter’s husband, but I expect every elven King would too. I have no doubt you will found your own House, but know my offer stands.”

“You are too generous,” Elrond says. “You do me undue honor.”

“What has brought you here, High King?” Celebrían asks, and Fingolfin sighs.

“The Council of the Eldar has been summoned. There has been an incident.”

“A serious one?” She asks.

“One grave indeed. The Valar have allowed us to judge what we deem best, but their wishes are plain. I myself am conflicted.”

“What is it?” She asks. Finarfin turns to Elrond.

“Kinsman,” he says. “You will of course have a seat on the Council, but you must be presented to Court before you can be permitted to hear of these things.”

“I understand,” he says. He has never been excluded from a Council, not once in his entire life. Always he has been held responsible, always he has been forced to render judgement. Finarfin’s words should make him furious, should make him ride up to Court at once to claim his birthright. Instead, he bows low. “High King, my lady.”

“Will you come to Court with us, Elrond?” Celebrían asks.

“No,” he says. “I have no wish to. I have meted our enough justice to last me a lifetime. Let the murderer hang, or set him at liberty. I will not decide.” Finarfin turns his eyes to him, grey eyes, grey like the sea in storm.

"Murder is one word for what was done, but there are others." He smiles, and his face seems much younger. “I will ensure the lady is comfortable in Tirion,” he says. “But I imagine we will meet again, and soon.” Elrond bows his head, and High King Finarfin dips his own. He retreats through the House, and contemplated finding the steward and reprimanding him for his poor training. Instead, he slips down to the stables. Celebrían has only a few mounts, her own, and Glorfindel’s, and two horses. One, he supposes, is the steward’s, the other a spare. King Finarfin has brought a retinue, but they are still standing in the courtyard. He has no desire to meet with them.

He leads the spare horse from his stall, and strokes his nose, and mounts him in an easy motion. He rides without saddle and bridle, in the Sindarin style, down the path to the beach. They canter along the shoreline, in silence except for the crash of waves. It is only when he turns the horse’s head back that he realizes he will be returning to an empty house. Glorfindel will go with Finrod and Celebrían; as Lord of the House of the Golden Flower, he has an important place in the Council.

Had Elrond wanted to lie with his wife? He bends over his horse’s neck and urges him to fly across the sand. There is no answer in the pounding of hooves, the washing of waves against the shore. He feels like riverwater stuck in an oxbow bend, lost from the main current of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who read, commented, and left kudos on this work. Your support is much appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

He had lived for millennia in the old world; he knows the power of water. After Elros had made his choice, but before he had left for the blessed island of Númenor, the brothers had wandered out into the wild. The hosts of Valinor had returned across the Sea, the Herald of Manwë had dragged Morgoth in chains to the Halls of Mandos, and Gil-Galad had granted him freedom from his oath, for a time. A year of mourning, while his brother yet lived.

The world had been more thickly forested then. They had climbed up into the Blue Mountains, and looked out across the unbroken sway of green trees in the wind. Elros was weaker, since his choice, and had to eat and rest more frequently. They shot grouse and pheasant and once, a threatening mountain cat, but they did not speak until they came to a trickle of water on the hillside.

“Brother,” Elros said, as he dipped his face in the water. “Do you see this river?”

“It’s a trickle,” he snapped. “It’s as much a river as I am a man.” He has been quicker to anger then, he reflects, and more prone to dramatic moments. A foible of youth, most likely, and not a serious character flaw, since in maturity he was reputed to possess an even temper.

“What you see is not what will always be. The landscape changes with the years; what is now a trickle will carve a channel hundreds of feet into hard rock, and you will be here to see it.”

“I don’t want to see your fucking rivers,” he said. “I didn’t become immortal for the scenery. I thought we would be together forever. I didn’t think you’d- if I’d known, Elros, I wouldn’t have chosen as I did.”

“I would never have asked you to surrender immortality for me,” Elros says. “I know how much you care for Gil-Galad, and how you long to meet our ancestors. It would not have been just for me to choose for us both.”

“Instead, you lead me to believe you would choose as I did.”

“Elrond, you will be the river. You are the one with visions, but I too have insight, and I have seen how you will carve your way through the solid matter of this world. You will reshape the world so slowly that even you will not notice. At the end, you will look back and realize that even though you began your life as an abandoned orphan, a drop of water in the sea of tragedy, you will have become a torrent. And I hope you will someday understand why I could not.”

“Elros,” he said. “Please, please, recant. Pray to Eönwë and tell him you were hasty, that you did not mean your choice.”

“I do mean it,” Elros says. “I have no love for long years of slow change. I have no desire to watch the world from afar. I want to know life, and to learn what lies in Mandos for those of Mortal blood. I will know what only Mandos and Ilúvatar know.”

“We will be sundered,” Elrond said. “It is a fate worse than death; we will never again encounter each other.”

“I know,” Elros said. “Elrond, I know.”

“If I am your trickle of water,” he said. “What are you?”

“A raindrop, Brother,” Elros had said. “A piece of insignificance, a bit of meaninglessness. But what would the world be without raindrops? We cannot all be rivers.”

He had visited Elros’ promised river when an errand for Gil-Galad, sometime close to the end of the Second Age, had brought him back through those mountains. There had been an earthquake, and where water should have been, there was only a pile of rocks. Perhaps that was why he had been convinced he would die in the war against the Enemy.

——————————————

Elrond arrives back at Celebrían’s house shortly after the midpoint of the night. The evening star shines high above him, and the emotion that wells through him when he sees the Silmaril winking high above him is a mixture of hatred and despair. He thinks of his own green gem, cut from the necklace on which the Silmaril sat, as like to the great gem as the reflection of a candle in the tears of a weeping child is like to a raging forest fire. So too the comparison between himself and his father, he supposes. He stables the horse, and because it is late, he leaves the stable boy to his rest and rubs down the stallion with a twist of hay. It is a comfort to perform simple tasks, and to concentrate on accomplishing something productive. When the horse is cool and cleaned of sweat, he feeds him hay and waters him. Celebrían and Glorfindel’s horses are missing.

He lets himself into the house, and finds a small dinner laid out. It is cold by now, but the fresh bread and butter and chicken remain enjoyable, and he pours himself a glass of Celebrían’s cheaper vintage, and selects a volume of poetry from her shelf.

The ride to Tirion is short; she must have arrived by now. Perhaps at this very moment she is walking into High King Finarfin’s Court, dressed in her most formal robes, accompanied by Glorfindel. Perhaps she is consulting with her mother, or Queen-Mother Indis, or Findis, or some other half-legendary being.

He wonders what the halflings make of Valinor, and where they have chosen to dwell. He expects that many of the elf lords will be willing to house them, both from generosity and curiosity. Most of the elves of Aman have not met a man, except for Idril’s husband Tuor, and his own father, and few of the elves in Middle Earth even knew of the existence of hobbits. Perhaps he will ask Celebrían to offer them housing. It is strange to have to ask another’s permission to do what he wills.

The hours change slowly, the sea roars outside. As dawn comes he strips himself and dives into the surf of the east-facing ocean. Only ships from Middle Earth to Valinor can find their way, and then only with the guidance of the Valar. He wonders what is on the other side of the sea, or if nothing, how far it stretches. He wonders if, in the old days, it had been possible to swim from Aman to Middle Earth.

Doing so would have broken the Ban, finally and irrevocably, and he would have been trapped forever in the world of death, but at least there he knows who he is. In Aman, he is not even certain that he is anyone. He begins to swim eastwards, out in the open water, with slow, powerful strokes. When does the Ban begin? Will he know when he has crossed it? Will he trespass accidentally, and be sundered forever from his wife? If he were to drown, would he find himself in Mandos as an elf, or would his defiance of the Valar strip him of his immortality? Can he become human?

When he has swum past the worst of the breakers, he turns around and looks at the silver-shored land. It is beautiful in the sunlight of midday; the city shimmers in the distance, and the mountains rise like purple flowers from a garden bed of green, fertile fields, but its beauty is alien to him, like the beauty of a song in a foreign language that he cannot understand. There is no current where he is, the waves simply slosh against him, the salt a tingle against his bare skin. Somewhere in Tirion, his wife must be seated in Council. Perhaps they will have resolved the issue. Even now, she could be on the road.

Somewhere in Middle Earth, in Gondor, his daughter’s son must be almost two years old. Mortal women give birth with near the frequency of dogs, even now she could be with her second child.

Aloud, he says, “You made this choice already, you old fool. There is no undoing it.” But he allows himself to float in the water until almost sunset, when, with weary limbs, he strikes for the shore.  
  


* * *

  
Celebrían has not returned when he dries himself, dripping, in the stables. Instead, there are six strange horses out at pasture, and he sees with a stab of fear that twists through his stomach like a sword that they wear blankets emblazoned with the fiery device of the House of Fëanor. He himself had fought his first battle under that banner; he had taken its silver star and incorporated it into his own sigil. He dresses himself, and considers the best way to flee this new company. Whoever they are (and there are not many left who use this symbol) he has little desire to meet with them.

But he is hungry; he has not eaten since dinner the night before, and if he were to take the spare horse, the guests would assume that someone in Celebrían’s household had slighted them by recognizing their presence and failing to greet them. The last thing he wishes to do is to create more needless strife between Fëanorians and the rest of Aman. He sighs, and enters his house. Whatever this is, it is most certainly not peace.

The steward accosts him almost before his foot crosses the threshold. “My lord,” he says. “I was growing worried that you would not return. You have visitors.”

“I’m certain they are for Lady Celebrían,” he says, although to his knowledge, none of the remaining Fëanorians have ever visited with her before. “My presence is not widely known, I will retire to my rooms and if you could be so kind as to send me dinner, I will not bother them.”

“My lord,” he says. “They have said they are here to see Lord Elrond of Imladris, and when I said you were out, they said they would wait a century. I have fed them and given them our best vintage, but-“

“Very well,” he says. “I will meet with them. I assume they are in the receiving room?”

“Yes, my lord,” the steward says. “Shall I announce you?”

“No need,” he says. “I’m not certain why they want to see me, but they should know that I don’t intend to be a lord. I won’t advance some distant grandnephew’s claim to kingship; I won’t be involved.” He straightens his robes, and considers donning his green gem, but thinks better of it. Best not to remind the Fëanorians, whomever they may be, of the Silmarils. He enters the receiving room.

There are two women, and two men. All are richly dressed, but one wears the grey of a widow, and has brown hair and brown eyes. Her features are thickset and almost irregular; she is one of the least attractive elves he has ever seen. She is muscular and tall, however, and she turns at his entrance.

“Lord Elrond of Imladris,” she says. “A star shines at the hour of our meeting.” Her accent is distinctly Fëanorian, complete with the preferred th sound in place of the more common s.

“Lady Nerdanel,” he says. He bows slightly. “Well met.” He turns to the other woman, a pale, blond Noldorin lady with fine features. “Lady Artariel,” he says. “You do me an undue honor.”

“We have heard many stories of your valor, Lord Elrond,” Maglor’s wife says. Maglor had told him stories of her beauty, and she is beautiful, but her eyes are round and rimmed in pain. “I am pleased to finally meet you.”

“Many stories are exaggerated by those who imagine themselves as storytellers,” he says. “Nevertheless, I find the tales of your beauty have not done you justice.”

“Kano said you had a golden tongue,” she says with a smile, but he frowns at her words.

“You have heard from Maglor?”

“You do not know?” Nerdanel asks.

“Know what?” The two Fëanorians share an uncomfortable look, and Nerdanel looks as though she wants to take his hands in her own. He withdraws his hands into his sleeves, just in case.

“Lord Elrond-“

“Please, simply Elrond.”

“Very well then, Elrond,” Artariel says with a smile. “Maglor has come to Valinor.”

“He crossed despite the Ban? How?”

“We do not know for certain. He was found by Turgon’s men on the beach, completely naked and almost starved to death, and covered in salt-wounds. The Head Healer recognized him. High King Finarfin has summoned a Council; we went there first, but your wife said that you were not yet presented to the Court.”

“I have no wish to take part in any affairs of judgement or justice,” he says. “I am content to fade into obscurity.”

“I hope you will reconsider,” Nerdanel says. He is prepared to argue, but her eyes flash in anger and he falls silent. “They are determined to put him to death.”

“Who are?”

“The children of Indis.”

“Mother, that is unfair.”

“High King Finarfin claims he is undecided, but it is easy to see that most of the Court is eager for his blood. Both of us have seats on the Council, and we may be able to sway some to grant him leniency, but we can never hope to spare him from death.”

“I am sorry,” he says. “I was fond of him.”

“We have come to ask you to save him.” He stands gaping like a struck fish for a moment.

“Me? I’m not even technically a Lord, I have no seat on the council, I have no power.”

“My husband raised you, Lord Elrond,” Artariel says. “I have heard from others that he gifted you with the traditional gifts a king gives his son, a horse, a suit of armor, and a shield emblazoned. I have seen your sigil; you use Fëanor’s silver star. If ever Maglor was anything more to you than a captor, I ask you by all that I love and hold dear, by the Valar, by the burning sun and silver moon, by the Silmarils, by my own life, Lord Elrond, to speak on behalf of my husband. He has no advocate. Without you he will certainly be slain.” He would sit, but if he does he cannot imagine rising again.

“All these years I had thought Maglor dead. There was so much I wished to say to him. I wanted him to meet my children. He and Maedhros both were kind, but I loved Maglor the best in all the world, except for my brother. I do not approve of many of his deeds, but I do not want him slaughtered. But I would rather speak on his behalf without my name.”

“The full Court has been summoned, there will be no private proceedings. If you agree to this, the whole island will know of your return from Elbereth.”

“Who is advancing the case?” He asks. He sees the look shared between the two women.

“Lord Eärendil,” Nerdanel says. Elrond laughs out loud, and the woman stare, but he can scarcely help himself.

“You would have me argue against my blood father in Court for the soul of the man who burned down my city and took me captive?”

“Forgive us,” Nerdanel says. “We should not have come.”

“Wait,” Artariel says. “You claim you have no Lord or noble House, you are not bound to serve your father. Please, I cannot lose my husband. It has been so long-“

“Did Maglor ask for me?”

“No. I went to visit him in prison, and after I left, Artanis, who is now called Galadriel, mentioned you had returned. The thought was mine. He did ask after you, however. He told me to tell you your daughter had a son, Eldarion. My congratulations.” So perhaps Maglor had not abandoned him as he presumed. Perhaps he had watched from afar as Elrond’s life unfolded.

“I have no formal robes, or, no robes formal enough for a King’s court.”

“The House of Fëanor will outfit you.”

“There is more, Mother,” Artariel says, and Nerdanel nods.

“You have a claim to the House and its holdings, if you accept Maglor’s adoption as legitimate.”

“Me?”

“He gave you the traditional gifts; you took a part of his sigil and made it your own. All the other members of the House have perished, and Finwë, while he yet lived, decreed that adoption is just as legitimate as birth.”

“I’m no Fëanorian,” he says, and Artariel smiles again.

“Perhaps not by blood, but should you wish it, we will accept you.”

“When will the trial be held?”

“We have been given three days to find an advocate for Maglor. Artanis offered her services, but she is not viewed with much love yet, and she agreed you would be better. Then, the negotiations will begin.”

“Would you and your servants stay here for the night?”

“We would be honored,” Nerdanel says. “In the morning, we shall ride to Tirion and outfit you, and I will retrieve some of the jewels of my House, and then we will present you before the Court.”

“Yes,” he says. His head is spinning; has he truly agreed to defend a Kinslayer, a murderer, from the justice his own true father desires? What will Celebrían think? he feels like a log tumbled in the rapids, swirling so swiftly that the river’s current seems meaningless.

* * *

In the morning, he packs his meager possessions and instructs the steward to tell no one of where he is going, and to protect his mistress’ possessions. Then, he saddles Celebrían’s spare horse.

“You shall have a string of mounts from Fëanor’s stables,” Nerdanel says. “They’re good breeding stock, swift and noble too. They’re prized across the island for their quality.”

“I couldn’t accept such a gift,” he says, but she brushes away his protestation.

“You are helping to save my son from certain death. If you have no need for horses, sell them and purchase silks and fine jewels for your wife.” He had had a string of horses in Imladris, and even then he had favored the temperament of Fëanorian mounts. He dips his head in gratitude.

“You honor me.”

“I am honored to meet you, Lord Elrond. You are as kind and generous as they say.” He flushes at her words, at their unexpectedness. Maglor had spoken of his mother on occasion, but he had portrayed her as a hard woman, wise and moral and unyielding, like stone. He, and the two ladies, and their two servants, mount their horses and ride towards the great city.

Tirion is situated in a cleft between the mountains, surrounded by verdant fields close to the sea, so close that when it is noon and the sea lies still, the reflections of the gleaming white buildings and tall towers can be seen in the waves. A part of him is shaken by how vast the city is, and how similar it is in design to Imladris. He wonders how much of his city was influenced by the tales the Kinslayers told him. He rides with a hood over his head to shield himself from scrunity; in his plain cloak he looks like only another servant. They ride up into the noble quarter, where Nerdanel halts before an imposing villa, made of white marble and gleaming stone, the walls covered in crushed diamonds.

“Come in,” she says. “Welcome to the House of Fëanor.” He dismounts his horse and follows her inside. The courtyard is walled but open to the sky, with a reflecting pool hewn from what appears to be solid rock. Statues of birds and animals and men litter the hallway, and one seems so lifelike that he has to brush his fingers against its cheek in order to ensure it is only stone. “As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m a sculptor.”

“I’ve never been one for statues,” he says. “But I see the stories told no lies about your skill.”

“My father is the best smith in Aman, after Aulë, of course, but I am second best.” She says it as some may say they are hungry. She is not prideful, or bragging. She is simply honest. “Someday I may be best.”

“I cannot imagine work finer than what is here,” he says, and she dips her head.

“These are my unfinished pieces. Some are close to completion, set here so I can look at them and continue to work on them when inspiration touches me. If you decide you wish to claim your holdings as the Heir of Fëanor, and if you wish to live here, they will be easy enough to transport away.”

“Please, Lady Nerdanel, I have no wish to remove you from your own dwelling. I do not seek the riches of Fëanor. I only want for a kind and decent man to be given a chance at redemption. I make no claim to his holdings in recompense for a good deed.”

“Nevertheless, should you or your wife ever wish for a home in Tirion, consider this one yours.” He bows his head, and Nerdanel whisks him down to the lower level of the house where the servants are quartered. “Fetch me the finest tailor and instruct him to bring materials of high quality suitable for a king’s son. Then go to the armory and find a sword that Finwë and Fëanor both wielded, and polish and sharpen it and bring it to me. Then find for Lord Elrond of Imladris the finest stallion we possess, and send to his wife’s house on the shore a string of horses, four stallions and twenty mares, along with provender, and construct a stable suitable for them. Finally, send a missive to Lady Celebrían, informing her of her husband’s presence in the city.”

“I would be obliged if Lord Glorfindel too could be notified,” he says. Nerdanel nods her head, and her people swarm to do her bidding.

“What sigil would you wear, Lord Elrond?”

“I will wear my own sigil,” he says. “As yet I have sworn no allegiance, and I do not intend to, at least until I have accomplished my task.” She nods in agreement, and vanishes into the interior of the house.

“This is not where Maglor was raised,” Artariel says. “He scarcely lived here. We used to dwell in Finwë’s palace, before Fëanor threatened his brother with a sword, and Finwë went with him into exile.”

“The long years must have been difficult for you,” he says. “I wish I had news of him that I might bring to you, but truth be told, I assumed he had died when he cast his Silmaril into the Sea.”

“Perhaps he did, in a way,” Artariel says. “He was not the same after he took the Oath. We had wanted children but he would not touch me after the Oath, because he was afraid that his son would be forced to share in Fëanor’s curse. I am sorry for the circumstances that led you to him, but I am glad he had a son like you, if only for a short span of time.”

“My lady,” he says. “I have a head for Law, and I argued many cases before High King Gil-Galad, but I cannot promise his salvation. I would not expect it, especially since my opponent is my father. The Fëanorians are not beloved.”

“It is enough that you are willing to try,” she says. “I would give the world to be able to touch my husband again; our separation has torn my soul to shreds. But I suppose you too are familiar with the burden of sundering.”

“Yes,” he says. He looks around, at the servant’s quarters. They are more finely decorated than his own chambers in Imladris. “Yes, I am very pleased to be reunited with her at last.”

* * *

The tailor brings with him a small army of assistants, and after taking his measurements the twenty or so elves under his direction begin the process of stitching him robes formal enough for Finarfin’s court. “You will have as many sets as there are days of trial,” Nerdanel had said, but the idea of such waste, even in times of peace, makes him queasy. He insists that he have but five, plus, once it is repaired, the set he wore when he arrived in Valinor. The robe is made from expensive fabric of so deep a purple that is almost black, and his sigil is embroidered on it by swift hands. The elves work tirelessly, and from the time he retires to his chambers to sleep to the time after he breaks his fast with the household and comes to check on their work, it is completed.

One of Nerdanel’s servants helps him into the outfit. First he dons a long tunic of woven silk, light and breathable, he is informed, and stitched with golden thread. Then a heavy doublet is fitted over his chest, with his sigil emblazoned above his heart, and then a cloak is fastened about his shoulders, made from rich, soft fur. Finally, he is presented with a circlet of gleaming bronze with a bright gem glowing in the center.

“It was an earlier invention of Fëanor’s,” the servant says. “It only reflects light; it does not contain it, but it is still a costly gem.”

Elrond looks at himself in the pool of still water. He is tall, made taller by the new, supple leather boots he has been given, and his robes are much finer than any set he owned in Imladris, except perhaps for the ones he wore to his wedding. The servant offers him a golden belt with a long sword hanging in an embroidered sheath.

“High King Finwë wore this sword when he wed Queen Míriel,” the man says. “And Lord Fëanor when he wed Lady Nerdanel.” He wonders if by wearing it, he is wedding himself to their accursed House. He buckled it against his skin, and the familiar weight of the sword soothes him, like a rider’s weight on an anxious horse’s back. He is a War Lord, he is meant for conflict.

Nerdanel and Artariel have gone to the Courts early, but their steward offers to escort him, and their Herald, a man older than he himself, offers to announce him before the Court.

He mounts his new stallion. The horse shifts under him, made nervous by an unfamiliar touch, but he sits back in the saddle and strokes the horse’s neck, and whispers in Sindarin in its ear. It settles, and, following the Herald, the Steward behind him, he rides for Finarfin’s palace and the assembled Court.

They have just begun proceedings when he arrives, but as advocates are introduced individually, he is not late. He hears the almost hundred elves file to their places, and he hears them rise when Finarfin enters, after his own Herald reads out a lengthy list of titles and accolades. Then, to much shouting, the prisoner is lead in. The cry of Kinslayer comes in Vanyarin, but more than a few Noldorin voices join in Quenya, and he is disheartened at the ruckus made by the crowd. He shall have to convince the commoners, as well as the Council.

Finally, the public official is called for, and with much fanfare, he hears his own father’s name. He shudders at the memory of their last meeting, after the defeat of Morgoth. He had turned away from his father’s offered embrace. This is tantamount to betrayal of his House. Perhaps he should-

But the call comes for the advocate of the prisoner, and he cannot walk away. He swore one oath besides oath of marriage, and his oath to Gil-Galad, and his oath to his brother’s descendants. He swore to protect the living from the shadow and the darkness.

Fëanor’s Herald advances into the courtroom. “I, Herald of the House of Fëanor, the firstborn son of Finwë, announce the advocate for Makalaurë Kanafinwë, called Maglor, secondborn son of Fëanor. I present the great-great-great-great grandson of Finwë, the great-grandson of Thingol-“ there is a sudden gasp in the courtroom, and then a complete silence. By now they all know it is he who will be speaking, but the Herald continues, undaunted “The great-great-grandson of Turgon, the grandson of Idril Celebrindal and the man immortal, Tuor, the grandson of Lúthien, the son of Elwing and Eärendil, the adoptive son of Makalaurë Kanafinwë, called Maglor, Elrond of Imladris, who is by birthright Lord of the Eldar.” The door opens for him, and the room is entirely silent when he enters. He can hear each breath he takes, he can hear each tread of his feet on the floor.

It is a vast audience hall. The hundred or so elves on the Council of the Eldar sit on a raised semicircular platform, in rows. They appear, somewhat loosely, to be organized by House. The room itself is hewn from white marble, and designed in such a way that, from where the advocates stand, even a whisper will carry to the farthest corners of the room. The common people sit on either side of the aisle, and he feels their gazes as he advances.

High King Finarfin rises.

“Adoptive son of Makalaurë Kanafinwë?” He asks. His voice is soft. “Is this the truth?”

“It is, High King” Elrond responds, evenly.

“So, we have another Fëanorian to contend with,” Finarfin says. It is supposed to be a joke, but there is no laughter.

He focuses on the face of Finarfin. The man appears to be teetering somewhere between rage and amusement, like a raindrop uncertain whether to fall down the northern or southern slope of a mountainside.

“Welcome to Court, Elrond Fëanorian,” he says. Elrond feels a sudden chill in his stomach.

“I do not distance myself from my father-name. Along with Fëanor’s silver star, my sigil bear’s Eärendil’s colors.”

“What are you then?” Finarfin asks. “A man cannot have two fathers. Name your House and we will proceed.” He breaths. He cannot answer this question; to claim Maglor would ruin his credibility as a witness; to claim his own father would suggest Maglor did not truly raise him. What name will he call his own? He opens his mouth, still answerless.

“High King,” a voice says. The eyes of the hundred gathered elves turn to the speaker, a man with a cheerful, scarless face. If possible, Elrond feels more dread than before.

“Ereinion Gil-Galad?” The man’s grandfather questions.

“I believe, in this one instance, Lord Advocate Elrond may have three. Shortly before my death, I named Lord Elrond my heir and successor, and gave him the right and responsibility of governing my holdings and my lands as a son, along with the right to use my sigil.”

“So the man who stands before us claims descent from Fëanor, firstborn son of Finwë, through his adoptive father, and descent through Fingolfin, secondborn son of Finwë, through his legitimate father, and descent through myself, Finarfin, thirdborn son of Finwë, through his second adoptive father of Gil-Galad? Does Elrond, Lord of the Eldar, make any other claims? Perhaps to High Kingship?” Even among the common audience, there is no sound.

“High King Finarfin,” he says. “We are not here to litigate descent. I have come on behalf of Makalaurë Kanafinwë, for whom I would ask mercy.”

“Very well,” Finarfin says. “Lord Eärendil, read out the charges.” Elrond looks to his father, but the man does not spare him a glance. When he meets Celebrían’s eyes, sitting among Finarfin’s people, her gaze is cool and treacherous. Even Galadriel looks deeply uncomfortable. Glorfindel is making the face he makes when a horse breaks loose from its trainer.

Eärendil begins to read.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there is going to be some sexual content at the end of this chapter. If you're not into that, just stop reading after the line of plusses (++++) appears. Fair warning, however: it's probably not going to be the scene you're hoping for between Elrond and Celebrían.

When he strides in his robes heavy with power, when he stands before the High King and declares his purpose, when he looks into Maglor’s sea-weary eyes and smiles and sees him stare with something like amazement, he feels the sludge in his veins begin to turn once more to liquid.

He knows who he is; all he needs is someone to define himself by. He is not a lord of peace, he is a War Lord, he lives by conflict. He can fight battles till the world’s end. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the constant striving, the struggle between wave and current as they vie for shore.

He takes his place beside his father, centered in the vast marble hall. The light of the morning sun streams through high windows, and a golden beam lands squarely on him as he kneels before the High King. Finarfin rises, and the Court follows.

“Eärendil, advocate of the state’s justice, may you speak words of truth, Vala-inspired, and may you guide us towards justice.”

“May it be,” Eärendil says, and the rest of the audience hall repeats his words. They echo in the dome and meld with the white light. May it be, may it be.

“Elrond, advocate of the accused, may you speak words of truth, Vala-inspired, and may you guide us towards justice,” Finarfin says.

“May it be,” Elrond says. The Court echoes his words.

“Court of the Eldar,” Eärendil says. “May you consider my petition, Vala-inspired, and may wisdom move you towards justice.”

“May it be,” the Court says.

“Court of the Eldar,” Elrond says. “May you consider my petition, Vala-inspired, and may wisdom move you towards justice.”

“May it be.”

“Makalaurë Kanafinwë, accused by the state’s advocate, may you tell the truth, Vala-inspired, and may your testimony guide us towards justice.”

“May it be,” Maglor rasps. The Court echoes his words. The roughness of Maglor’s voice grates against Elrond’s ears. When he had known him, Maglor had had a honey-sweet voice, a voice made for singing hymns and laments. He filled the dark halls of gloomy Amon Ereb with songs, but judging by the harshness of his speech, Elrond imagines that he has not sung in a very long time.

The elf is extraordinarily emaciated. His skin is pulled back right against his scalp, giving his head the appearance of a skull, a mockery of his fine bones and delicate, almost feminine features. The effect is heightened by his sunken brown eyes, red-rimmed and almost motionless. Despite the silver robe he wears, his body seems gaunt, Elrond can tell by the way he holds himself that his shoulder and probably two of his ribs have been severely broken, and he wonders whether the injuries happened in Finarfin’s custody, or during the elf’s journey West.

His hands have the appearance of charred meat, and he has but seven fingers. They are gnarled, like the trunk of a tree on a mountaintop, wind-twisted. So, Elrond thinks. The gold-cleaving harper now can neither harp nor sing. Elrond himself does not sing often, but the knowledge of the Song within himself is constant. At any moment, if he wished, he could pick up an instrument or lift his voice in Song. The first thing the Enemy did, when he began to create his orcs, was deform the tongues and lips and fingers of his captives, to sunder them eternally from the Music of Illúvatar.

Every inch of visible skin is sunburned and salt-scarred. How long had he drifted out in the open waters before he had found his way to shore? There is no current from the old world to Valinor, there is not even a route, unless you are in an elven ship. Some Being, then, must have helped his passage. Which one, and for what purpose?

"The proceedings shall officially begin. I, Finarfin Arafinwë, call upon the Valar to guide us in our search for justice against Makalaurë Kanafinwë.”

“May it be,” the elves of the Council intone.

“Lord Eärendil,” Finarfin says. “Present your purpose.”

“High King, Honorable Council, we have in our midst the last scion of Fëanor, a Kinslayer, a rebel against justice and against the Valar. In my capacity as an advocate for the well-being of all elves, I shall ask that you sentence him to death for his crimes against our people.”

“Lord Elrond,” High King Finarfin said. “Present your purpose.”

“High King, Honorable Council, I ask you to look upon this elf, last scion of a fallen House, a wretch and a tortured man. In your capacity as lawgivers and rulers, I shall ask that you grant this man mercy.”

“Thank you, Lord Advocates,” Finarfin says. “Lord Eärendil, present your case.”

A river might bend or curve or oxbow, it might muddle through flatlands and sink into silt so it becomes little more than a trickle, but a river will never run backwards. Its path is linear, determined by the landscape, and unless you build a dam to stop its flow, it will continue on until it touches the sea. So too are the charges Eärendil lays against Maglor.

He begins after Elrond takes his place beside the Fëanorian. Maglor does not so much as look at him, and he holds one arm against his chest. The Song of Healing flitters through his mind, and he resolves to visit the elf and heal him of his wounds once the introductory session is complete. The affairs of justice moved slowly, even in the old world, and Elrond expects it could be a year or more before a verdict is reached. He brushes his finger’s against the elf’s sleeve, and his arm shudders from the contact.

“Maglor,” he says. “May the Valar bless our meeting.” The elf does not lift his head, and when Elrond attempts to embrace him, he flinches. Elrond wonders whom Maglor would have asked to be his advocate, if Nerdanel had not hunted him down first. Would he have called upon one of his father’s half-brothers, perhaps Fingolfin, who loved Maedhros, and who might have been willing to argue for his brother? Or perhaps he would have called upon Finarfin himself, to defend him as his kinsman? The elf could not have refused without betraying his House. Whom would Maglor have chosen, since he did not ask for Elrond? Is he disappointed? “I know I’m not who you wanted,” he says. “But I’ll do my best for you.”

“I didn’t want anyone,” Maglor says, but Eärendil begins to speak, and whatever else he would have said is silenced.

“High King, Honorable Council, we have in our midst the last scion of Fëanor, a Kinslayer, a rebel against justice and against the Valar. In my capacity as an advocate for the well-being of all elves, I ask that you sentence him to death for his crimes against our people.

“It is not necessary to enumerate his many sins. He followed his father east into Middle Earth, after slaughtering many innocents at Alqualondë. He valued ships more than he valued elvish lives, and he proved this again when, in his haste to hunt Morgoth, he participated in burning the ships at the far shore of Middle Earth, stranding the Host of Fingolfin in Valinor, and leading to the treacherous crossing of the Helcaraxë, where many elves perished needlessly. He refused to repent of his actions and turn back when the Doom of Mandos was announced, and when the Valar decreed eternal punishment for all elves who rejected them. He established a kingdom in Beleriand, and raised armies against the evils of Morgoth in pursuit of the Silmarils; his lack of foresight lead many to their dooms, many who even now wait languishing in Mandos’ Halls, forbidden to return, forbidden to be reembodied until they suffer twentyfold for the suffering they caused. He and his brothers descended upon Doriath after Lúthien and Beren cut a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, and again he slew his fellow elves in pursuit of a jewel. He and his brothers destroyed an entire kingdom, and recklessly doomed many to death by the sword, and many more to starvation and pestilence and torture by orcs. When news came to him that the Silmaril resided in Elwing’s hand at the new port of Sirion, again he raised an army, and again he and his brother slaughtered an unprepared people. When they failed to retrieve the Jewel, they stole my own two sons away from their kin, and raised them in the manner of the Fëanorians.

“When at last the Valar decreed it time to fight against Morgoth, the Fëanorians came when summoned, but after the Enemy was cast down and the Silmarils cut from his iron crown and taken into ownership, he and Maedhros slew the guards who held them, and took the Jewels, and passed out of all knowledge. Now, after centuries of war and pain and heartache in the east of the world, after disaster and loss and famine and death, Maglor has come back to Valinor, still bound by an unbreakable Oath. Perhaps, Maglor, you wish to recite the accursed words you swore?”

“You do not have to,” Elrond says. The elf raises his eyes to the assembled Council, and in his strange Quenya, he speaks Fëanor’s words.

“Be he foe or friend,” he begins. His voice quavers on the first words but grows stronger as he continues. ”Be he foul or clean,  
brood of Morgoth or bright Vala,  
Elda or Maia or Aftercomer,  
Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,  
neither law, nor love, nor league of swords,  
dread nor danger, not Doom itself,  
shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin,  
whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,  
finding keepeth or afar casteth  
a Silmaril. This swear we all:  
death we will deal him ere Day's ending,  
woe unto world's end! Our word hear thou,  
Eru Allfather.” There is a shuffling in the Courtroom, as the elves make the sign to ward off the evil that can come from invoking Illúvatar’s name without caution. If Maglor notices, he makes no pause to accompany his audience’s unease. “To the everlasting  
Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.  
On the holy mountain hear in witness  
and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda.”

A shiver runs up Elrond’s spine at the words that hang for a moment in the air. Their effect would scarcely be amplified if he had spoken in the Black Tongue itself.

“And tell me, Maglor,” Eärendil says. “Where is the Silmaril that you snatched from the Valar?”

“I cast it into the Sea,” he says. He holds up his hands, and they are blackened and gnarled and burned. “I saw that I was impure and unfit to hold it in my blood-drenched hands, and I yielded it, in violation of my Oath.”

“You slew your kinsmen. You ravaged cities. You slaughtered thousands. At the end of it all, you broke an Oath sworn by Eru and Varda and Manwë. Death alone remains for you, murderer, oathbreaker, Kinslayer.” Maglor bows his head, and Elrond sees a tear drip from his cheek to the floor. Next he will speak, he will have to argue against his own father, against irrefutable evidence, and what can he say that will-

When he raises his head, all is still, all is frozen. The air is scented with sea-salt and the noise of rushing waters fills the Courtroom. The walls weep with saltwater, the sconces shudder and then blaze higher, and from between the two vast doors, an even vaster figure comes, on his head an iron crown and a gleaming gem, so bright to look upon that it blinds Elrond’s eyes. He wears silver-green mail, and carries a large horn in his hands.

“Elrond,” the Vala says. He speaks with a voice deep as the Ocean, and his syllables roll against each other like the continuous crash of wave on rock. “You have not prayed for my aid, but nevertheless, I have come to advise you. It is my will that the elves forgive Fëanor’s son, for although he broke an inviolate oath, he repents of his sins and he has suffered much for them. It was I who inspired him to build a raft, and it was I who guided it across the chasm that separates this world from the old one, and I would see my purpose come to fruition.”

“My lord,” Elrond says. “I cannot argue against my father’s charges. Everything he says is true.”

“It is,” Ulmö says. “But that is why you must ask for mercy.” Elrond is forced to close his eyes against the brightness of Maglor’s Silmaril on Ulmo’s brow, and when he opens them, he is bathed in a beam of bright sunlight. The threads of gold and silver in his robes glimmer, and he knows from the startled countenance of Maglor that he is reflecting, in some small manner, the brightness of the Silmaril. Some of the elves make the sign to ward off calamity when he rises to speak.

“There is something strange about him,” he hears a man whisper in the commoner’s section. “I’ve heard it said he too is an Oathbreaker.”

“The words of Eärendil are true,” he says. “Maglor slaughtered his kinsmen; he defied the Valar, at many points throughout his life, when he might have asked for forgiveness, he continued down his path of destruction. He deserves death for his wickedness. He admits this, as do I.”

“Then the Council shall-“ Finarfin begins, but Elrond raises a gleaming hand and he falls silent. He remembers the ease with which he had commanded armies, before. A glance from him and a roomful of squabbling courtiers would silence themselves. His people cheered his name like they would that of a conquering hero. He glances at Celebrían, and she quirks her eyebrows at him, like she used to when a particularly stupid idea was proposed in the council in Imladris. He turns towards the rest of the Council, and he lifts his voice.

“I ask for mercy for Maglor,” he says. A Sindarin elf with silver hair and a golden crown scoffs. Thingol, perhaps, or else some close relative. He hears whispering in the commoner’s section, and he sees some members of the Council shove back their chairs and rise. “By your oaths, you shall remain to hear my words,” he says. “We are sworn to justice, I know, but without mercy what is justice but revenge? It is within our rights to execute the Fëanorian. I do not deny his crimes; I daresay I have suffered their consequences more than many of you. But I ask you to look at the man, Lords and Ladies. Do you see his broken shoulder? Do you see his burned hands? Do you see the scars across his body? Do you see his fingers, too ruined for harping? Do you see in him the avarice and viciousness of an unrepentant murderer? I do not. I see an elf who has suffered unimaginable tortures without the solace of the Valar or his kinsmen. I see an elf who made an oath in haste and fury, and who, despite the peril to his soul, broke it to yield the object of his millennia-long search to the Valar. I see a being whom we should forgive. What good will his death bring to us that his life will not?”

“Lord Elrond,” a voice from the Council says. It is an elf-lord wearing a silver crown, sitting beneath Goldolin’s banners. “You were Lord of a great city, as was I. I assume you are aware that mercy, as admirable a virtue as it is, cannot be the guiding principle of any society. Laws exist to protect our people, and when they are broken, the violators must be punished. Executing the Kinslayer might be distasteful, but doing so reestablishes order, and order is what separates our people from the chaos of the external world.”

“King Turgon,” he says. “I agree that justice is a vital component of our civilization. But do you truly believe that an act of mercy towards Maglor would inspire others to break our laws? Do you not think his suffering for the past millennia is warning enough to any who would disobey the will of the Valar? And even if it is not, there are no Silmarils left to steal. Ulmo holds one, my father the other, and Maedhros cast himself into a volcano with the third. Maglor’s rebellion was awful and unjustifiable, but it cannot be repeated. If we execute him, we will only be punishing a kinslayer by slaying our own kin. This conflict that began when Morgoth twisted Fëanor to threaten you, King Fingolfin, at sword-point, will end with Fëanor’s son falling before the point of a sword. Is that how this tale is doomed to end? Must bloodshed overcome civility, here, in the greatest Council known to the world?”

“Execute him!” A lone voice in the crowd of commoners calls out, and again, and again, and then the chant is taken up and passed around the room like a breath of a chill wind tearing down from mountains laden with snow. The blood in his veins stiffens back into ice, and he yields the floor to his father. He meets Eärendil’s eyes, and sees his daughter’s, Elros’ eyes looking back at him.

“I’ll say one good thing about Maglor,” Eärendil says. He shines with light, even in the daytime, and the staff he holds in his hands is green and glowing like a candle. He speaks softly, so softly that only Elrond can hear his words. “He made sure you knew your rhetoric. Perhaps he knew someday you’d be called upon to defend him.”

* * *

After the first day of proceedings, he receives a message from Finarfin inviting him to dine with his House. The invitation comes from a young steward, a girl who is some distant relative of both himself and Finarfin. She wears the colors of Finarfin’s House, and she offers up her words with a precise and exacting tone, that, he imagines, perfectly emulates the manner in which Finarfin dictated them. He accepts, and she gestures for him to follow.

“What of the Lord Makalaurë?” He asks her.

“The prisoner is to remain under custody until the proceedings of the trial are accomplished, Lord Elrond,” she says. “Due to his known predilection for escape-“

“It’s fine, Elrond,” Maglor says. “I am content to remain imprisoned. I am so thankful that you came-“

“You are not to speak, except in confidence with your advocate.” The girl says. She is polite, but firm in her purpose.

“I will visit you later, and consult with you about the case,” Elrond says. Maglor bows his head, and Elrond follows the girl as she leads him through the marbled floors and golden halls of the palace. The scope of Tirion is massive, far beyond any of the great cities he had seen during his time in Middle Earth, and the King’s Palace is larger than all of Imladris.

“Every relative of the High King’s, no matter how distant, may dwell with him if they should so choose,” the steward says, perhaps understanding his confusion at the size of the building. “No matter how many elves live here, there is always room for more.”

“It must be a wearying job to rule over so many souls,” he says.

“It is the purpose of the Council to lighten the King’s load. Generally, elves choose to place themselves under the service of the Lord they were bound to during life, if they died and were reembodied, although it is possible to switch allegiances. Lord Glorfindel, for instance, might have remained here in service to Lord Turgon, but instead he swore allegiance to you yourself, my lord.”

“Yes,” he says. He had read quite a few philosophical treatises on Lord Glorfindel’s return, most written by the under-lords studying statecraft in his Court. He had read them aloud to Glorfindel, with Celebrían’s head on his shoulder, or resting on his lap, laughing at the ridiculous propositions or illogical conclusions they had woven to explain a world they did not understand. The girl stops before an ivory door, plain except for a bas-relief carving of Finarfin’s sigil. Elrond wonders where the old doors with Fingolfin’s sigil are, and the doors before them, with Finwë’s. Where does the detritus of passed time disappear to, in a world where life is not measured by months or by years but by yén and millennia? What happens to memories in a land of memory?

The door opens with only a brush of her hand, and she announces him as “Elrond, Lord of the Eldar, advocate for Makalaurë Kanafinwë. She lisps slightly on the correct pronunciation of Maglor’s name, and he feels a stab of recognition.

“I know you,” he says.

“Yes,” she responds. “I was your mother’s servant, originally a Sinda from Doriath. Maedhros drove his sword into my heart.” He shivers, and it takes every ounce of his will to avoid making the sign against evil.

A feasting table is arranged along the wall, and it is about half-filled with elves. King Finarfin’s place is empty, but his wife is seated close to the King’s dais, and the girl leads him to a place beside her, three seats removed from the King’s right. It is a seat of honor.

His wife is dressed in the bright yellows of Finarfin’s house, and when she turns to more fully observe him, her dress’ fabric shivers like a flame. Her hair is bound into intricate ringlets and braids on her head; not a strand of it flies loose around her face.

“Elrond Fëanorian,” she says, but her voice is soft and gentle and almost teasing. “That was quite the entrance you made today. Do you think you would mind informing me in the future, if it’s not too much trouble, that you’re shifting our House allegiances? I would have worn the red of Fëanor, and not Finarfin’s yellow, if I’d known.”

“It wasn’t meant to sound so official,” he says. She pours him a heavy-handed glass of wine, and raises her goblet. “I half expected you to declare yourself King of the Eldar after that introduction. And what on earth did you mean, we are not here to litigate descent? Do you want the crown?”

“No,” he says. “If I wanted a crown I could have had one back home. I simply meant that I didn’t want to argue with Finarfin about my House.”

“You’re lucky Gil-Galad spoke up for you, or Finarfin would have made you choose. Gil-Galad spoke to me during one of the recesses; he wanted to know why you didn’t come see him before you made the choice to be Maglor’s advocate. I told him I had the same question.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I know I should have spoken to you, but Nerdanel and Artariel just appeared, and it all happened so quickly after that. I sent you a missive.”

“Yes, which was appreciated, although you might have sent for me myself.”

“There’s something else,” he says. She raises her eyebrow, and he smiles at her expression. “Nerdanel gave me a string of Fëanor’s horses. I know you prefer Sindarin mounts, but-“ Celebrían bursts out laughing. Her teeth flash in the candlelight, and when she shifts position to better hide her laughter, he sees the long scar that he had struggled to heal on her chest is now little more than a faint discoloration. If he hadn’t known it was there, if he hadn’t been looking for it, he would never have noticed it. How had they gotten the wound to heal?

“Are you staring at my breasts, my Lord of the Eldar?” She asks, so softly that only he can hear. “For shame! You would think with three fathers one of them would have taught you manners.” Her eyes glint with more unspoken laughter, and he kisses her hand. He had not noticed how low-cut her dress was.

“Your wound is healed,” he says. Her eyes spark with something that seems like indignation, but she smiles at him, all sweetness and honey.

“As I’ve told you-“

“I believe you-“

“I am healed. I am well.”

“I’m glad,” he says. “I’m so happy.”

“Will you come to me tonight?” She asks. Her voice is low, urgent. What does she want from him, and why can she not leave things be the way they are? It is not enough for her that they can once more look upon each other?

“Yes,” he says. “Are you staying in the palace?”

“I am,” she says. “I lived here for a time, after I got used to being among elves again.”

The Herald announces the King’s entrance, and those seated at the table rise at his entrance. He stops to speak with some of the gathered nobles; he brushes a kiss against his daughter Galadriel’s hand, and he embraces his wife Earwen before he sits. The first course is a hearty stew, with chunks of meat simmering in a rich sauce, and fresh vegetables. What is the season outside of Valinor? Is it winter? Spring? Is his daughter well? By now his daughter’s child would be eating solid food, Elrond realizes. He wonders what the boy favors.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Celebrían drags him away from a conversation with Glorfindel and Turgon about some of the exiles from Gondolin who had settled in Imladris but who still had yet to sail, out through a secret door into a walled garden, then into her own chambers. They too are Finarfin’s yellow, with a small bookcase and an easel.  
“Did you ever draw before?” He asks.

“I wasn’t good, but I’ve had five hundred years of nights alone, so I’ve gotten much better at it,” she says. “Still, I’m so glad you’re here, Elrond.” She kisses his ear, and touches her wet tongue to the place where she presses her lips. He wants to shudder at the sensation, but he forces himself to remain motionless. “I’ve longed for you every night. Do you know how often I lay awake, watching the moon rise and fall from my balcony, dripping wet and in need of you? I dreamed of you, lying awake and hard and in need of me, staring at the same moon, before I reached down between my legs and-“ she fumbles with his robes, unclasping and untying, and he tries to will himself to feel something. It had never been any work before, it had come naturally, as easy as breathing. She brushes her hand over his breeches, and he sees, or imagines he sees, a glimmer of confusion in her eyes. “I wanted you,” she says. “I’ve only ever wanted you, my love.”

“And I you,” he says. She pulls his head down and kisses him, open-mouthed, and he opens his own mouth in response to her probing tongue. She pushes him towards her settee, and sits him down, and she climbs atop his lap. He can feel the wetness of her against his stomach, and he wills himself to rise, to be what she wants him to be. She shifts backwards, and he glides his fingers up her legs, up to her cunt. As promised, she is wet, and she cries out when he brushes his knuckle against her mound. “Shh,” he whispers, increasing his pressure and stroking her with his fingers. She throws her head back, her hair still bound in its tight braids, and he spreads her legs further apart, and slips first one, then two fingers inside her. She is tight and hot and wet around him, and he eases her towards the edge of her pleasure. She sighs when he settles into her preferred rhythm, and when he quirks his fingers up at the same time as he presses against her mound, she cries out and a spasm overcomes her body. She kisses him, open-mouthed, and he holds her for a time as she pants in his arms. She is hot and sweaty, like Arwen was towards the end of the War, feverish with the small taste of mortality her body had experienced. When she can speak again, he sets her down gently and he rises.

“Elrond,” she says. “The night is young yet, where are you going?”

“I must see to Maglor’s wounds,” he says.

“I’ll be quick then, let me slake your lust.”

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Elrond,” she says.

“It’s nothing, Cel,” he says.

“I want you to join with me,” she says. “I want my husband.”

“I want that too,” he says. The bitter voice inside him names him liar, and he turns from her, in case she sees the truth in his face. “More than anything. But I have so much to do, Cel, and I-“

“That’s fine,” she says. “When you’re finished, come back. I’ll be here, still thinking of you.”

“And I you,” he says.

“I could take you in my mouth,” she says. She smiles at him, coy and arch. He remembers a time when even that smile could send him mad with lust. He if let her see him, if he let her touch her, what would she think of him, weak and unmanned and incapable?

“Don’t torment me,” he says, and she laughs.

“Hurry back.”

“I will,” he says. He hopes Maglor will forgive him for wishing that every bone in his body is broken.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first section of this chapter, there's a more detailed account of the aftermath of Celebrían's rape. I've marked where the section ends with a line of stars. There are also references to rape throughout this chapter, so if this is not something you feel comfortable reading, please don't hesitate to ask me for a summary. Also, if you feel that something I've written is controversial or needs explaining, don't hesitate to let me know in the comments.

He bolts from Celebrían’s rooms, his heart an iron weight in his chest. His hands still smell of her, his lips are tender from the ardor of her kisses. A part of him, the part of him that sees only good omens, thinks on her words and all but shivers in joy. She loves only him, she wants only him-

But how can she want him?

How can she want to be touched like he just touched her?

He saw what they did to her. He can still see it, every time he shuts his eyes. He can hear Elladan’s voice, bordering on hysteria. “We were just out hunting, Father, and we found an orc-pack and traced them to their caves, and we thought we’d shoot them with our bows, from afar. We toyed with them for days, always staying out of sight, striking and retreating, until we whittled their numbers down enough to directly confront the few that remained in their cave. We didn’t even know Mother was going to Lothlórien.”

He shuts his eyes, but the memory overwhelms him. Elladan, dressed in filthy clothing, his shirt half torn open and a nasty cut on his chest oozing foul-colored blood, stinking of sweat and blood-caked, his cheeks tear-tracked and pallid from weariness.

“How did you find her?” He had asked. At that point she still had slept, and as his sons spoke he had been cleaning her wounds. He had started on her hands, he remembered, because he wanted her to be able to play her harp. He had not imagined-

“We thought there might be a horde of treasure,” Elrohir said. Elrond could almost have laughed. “We wandered through the caverns. There was an armory with crude swords; we sparred with each other for close to an hour, playing with the blades. They were so poorly made. I pretended to be an orc and I made a mockery of our sword drills.” Elladan touched his brother’s shoulder, and Elrohir gripped his fingers. He could imagine them, happy and joyful, certain of their strength, young lordlings who had no need to be afraid. Twin with twin. “Eventually we grew bored, but there was one more cavern, and we were hungry. We thought maybe there’d be bread or ale. But it was a room with the bodies of elves in it-“ Elrohir’s voice cracked, and a tear slipped from between his lids, then another. “We saw Lord Faendol,” he said. “His eyes were gouged out, and we knew-“ a sob broke from his chest, and Elrond felt his heart shiver into splinters of pain. ”We knew it had been done while he was alive, because of how much blood had spilled.”

“Elrohir,” he said. He wrapped the bandage around Celebrían’s fingers, and dried his hands on a towel. The fabric streaked red beneath his touch. He embraced his son, and pressed his head into his chest, and opened his arms to Elladan. “Elrohir, Elladan, my sons, I am so sorry-“

“There’s more.” Elrohir said. Elrond could feel the boy’s tears staining his robes, and he prepared himself to hear of eaten corpses. His wife was lucky she had survived so long. Orcs most often killed elves on sight, if they were able, but things had changed in the past century, and they had been known to keep elves alive for months at a time, in order to have a constant supply of meat. He had not shared this information with his sons; perhaps he had been negligent.

He breathed a prayer of thanks to the Valar that they had spared his wife such a fate. “Father,” Elrohir said. He used the child’s word for father, the one elflings outgrow when they are large enough to ride horses. “Father,” he said again. “Father, she was naked. We saw she had no clothing, we saw the blood on her legs-“

“No,” he said. He pulled away from his children, and scarcely felt the pang of guilt at abandoning Elrohir. “No, no, no it cannot be, it must not.” He felt the blood whirling in his head, he heard his own heart pounding. “Elladan, tell me-“

“It’s our fault!” The boy cried. “We spent close to two weeks hunting them. If only we had been more efficient, we-“ Elrond scrubbed his hands, and drew the curtain meant for privacy between his weeping children and his wife. He prayed to the Valar again, curses and pleadings and bargainings, and he looked at her injuries, and he sang a Song of Discerning, and he saw the hands scrabbling on her flesh, and he felt the thrust of bodies against hers, and he heard her scream, uselessly-

For the first time since he was very young, he fled a patient’s chambers to vomit.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Elrond realizes he is hopelessly lost when he turns into a corridor he expects to lead to the feasting hall, and instead finds himself in a hallway lined with a massive tapestry. He swears, softly. He had not paid attention when Celebrían had dragged him from the festivities, he had been too concerned about his inability to please her. What will she say when she realizes? Will she blame herself? Will she believe he no longer loves her? What if she comes to wonder whether the stories of his child with another woman are entirely false? He could not bear for her to think such things.

Also, a part of him is furious. He hates this part of himself the most, it is the part that is always jealous and insecure and covetous and prideful. He wants to be able to fuck his wife. He wants the release that sex brings, he wants to be able to bury himself between her thighs and kiss her round lips with his lips and join himself to her as he has not been able to do in half a millennium.

How long has it been?

He knows he should dwell on the fact that he is lost, rather than on his inability to-

The tapestry is beautiful, he notices. Celebrían had taught him how to weave, over the course of three particularly peaceful and productive years. In all that time he had not slain a single soul. His fingers were nimble from his work Healing, and he was good at guiding the shuttle and tensioning the warp, and he had made a robe unfit for wearing and a small tapestry of a tree, before war had called him away. He knows just enough about weaving to know that the work he is looking at is exceptionally fine. His wife is known for her skill and artistry, and not even she could create the kind of tapestry he sees before him. The work glows with an inner light. The threads shimmer and shiver together, the pictures presented change and shift based on the shadows cast by torchlight.

The first scene in the tapestry features a cloud of Ainur, radiant in gold and silver, surrounding the world at its creation. The Trees of Valinor are present as saplings; Varda’s stars burn in the sky above. The world is fresh-made and green, and there is neither mountain nor habitation. At the same time, however, the fabric is separated by color and thread, so that although on first glance he appears to be looking at the world as it was before the Valar removed Valinor from the western world, and made the earth round, in the shadows and outlines he sees a map of the world as it is today.

The next image is of a harping contest between three elves at a wedding. He can almost hear the strength of their voices, and the bride and groom sit and listen in rapture as the song weaves around them, but at the edge of the scene, darkness unfolds. A shadow in the shape of Ungoliant steals towards the two Trees, now mature, and poisons them with her venom.

And now the images came more quickly, a herd of cattle slaughtered by orcs, a feast of welcome in Doriath, a woman wounded to the point of death, three birds wing-swift, flying across a bay, a city burned down by a single torch, a river dammed up by rocks fallen from a high, white tower, a Ring, a sword, an iron crown, a gem, a child born alive but doomed to death, and around the whole tapestry, like a border, the Sea that contains the world and marks its boundary.

“I’ve always liked this one the most,” Glorfindel says. “When I was a child, I used to rummage in the storerooms, and one day I found where High King Finwë had hidden away the tapestries of Míriel, his first wife. The pursuits of women did not interest me, but Míriel’s tapestries did. I thought if I could understand their meanings, I could understand the meaning of the world. I recognize more scenes now than I did when I was a child. This welcome feast was one I saw in Doriath, this fallen tower is Gondolin, this Ring is the Ring of the Enemy, but I don’t know the dead woman, or the birds, or the burning city, or the child. Some days I think I’ll have figured out the mystery, but when I return its true meaning is obscured, and I feel no wiser.”

“I’m lost,” he says. “I’m trying to find Maglor.” Glorfindel smiles at this.

“The prisons are a long walk from here; I’ll show you.”

“If you’re busy-“

“It’s no trouble,” Glorfindel says. “You’re my lord, yet you’ve given me complete leisure for two years. I can guide you through a fortress without overtaxing myself. But Elrond, I do wish you’d give me something to do.”

“I expect you’ll eventually return to Turgon,” he says. “I’m surprised you haven’t.”

“Why would I?” Glorfindel asks. “I want no memory of Gondolin. I far prefer serving you.”

“I assumed Ecthelion would encourage you to shift allegiances.” Glorfindel does not meet his eyes, and Elrond wonders whether he has touched upon Glorfindel’s reason for seeking him out.

“I won’t be angry, Glor,” he says. “You’re more than my subject, you’re a good friend. If Ecthelion wants you to return to Turgon’s Household, then-“

“What you’re suggesting is not readily smiled upon here,” Glorfindel says. “You should know that. The Customs say nothing about whom may marry, but the prescription to procreate is tightly bound into the High Law. There will be no changing of Households.”

“Glor,” he says. “If Ecthelion wants to leave Turgon’s Household, I would gladly-“

“You’re going to make enemies if you place yourself in conflict with the old customs,” Glorfindel says. “I admire you, Elrond, and you’re always wise, but you don’t understand what you did today. There hasn’t been a male member of the House of Fëanor in Valinor since the Kinslayers fled to Middle Earth.”

“I know,” Elrond says.

“You don’t,” Glorfindel says. “If you manage to get mercy for Maglor, and are able to set him free, it will be said that you did so in order to position yourself against Finarfin and claim the throne. If you fail to get mercy for him, it will be said that you deliberately ruined the case so that you could inherit Maglor’s possessions.”

“I’m not going to take anything from Nerdanel,” he says. “I only wanted to help the man I used to call Father.”

“I know, my friend,” Glorfindel says. “But I am warning you to be cautious in whom you place your confidence. I will always support you, Erestor will always support you, Galadriel and Celebrían and Gil-Galad will all fight for whatever you wish, but not all elves are thrilled to have you present. After you left with Celebrían, I overheard Finarfin tell Turgon that his grandson was a man doomed to trouble the peace of every land he touched. He was jesting, but-“

“It’s not an inaccurate assessment,” Elrond says. “When I think of what happened to Celebrían-“

“Elrond,” Glorfindel says, and he pauses. “Elrond, do you remember what happened after you realized what had been done to Celebrían?”

“I did my best to begin the process of healing her body, and I collapsed into my bed and wept uselessly until morning.”

“You did one thing before that,” Glorfindel says. “Do you remember what you told your sons?”

He had paused to change his robes. He had been wearing a deep blue, but the blood had soaked into the fabric and stained it, and he smelled of wounds and smoke and stale, dried blood, and the knowledge that it was his wife’s made him feel ill again, and besides, he wanted to appear comforting when he spoke with his sons. Elladan’s words rang in his ears, ceaselessly, continuously. “It’s our fault, we spent close to two weeks hunting them! If only we had been more efficient-“ His poor children.

He ran through every curse he knew as he stripped himself of his filthy clothes and scrubbed the blood from his body and dressed again in robes of a soft grey, and bound his hair from his face, and made himself appear calm. The fire burning in his heart seemed set to consume him. He had never understood Fëanor’s wrath and ceaseless rage, his contempt for the Valar and the way the world was ordered, but Elrond curses Varda for her part in his wife’s capture, and he curses Mandos for refusing to draw her into his Halls and spare her the suffering that is certain to come, and he curses Oromë for failing to help his sons overcome their mother’s captors sooner, and Mandos for failing to provide him with foresight, and Yavanna for ignoring her plight. “Nienna,” he begs, as he clasps his cloak around his throat and binds his knife to his waist. “Nienna, if you feel our sorrows then help me comfort my sons. If you care at all for what has happened, help me heal my children.

He hurried through his halls, and not one of his courtiers met his gaze. He saw one of the lesser ladies crying in the shadows of a courtyard, a girl who had been raised by the State, because her mother had perished falling from a horse in a storm, and her father had vanished into the woods and never returned. Celebrían had held her in her lap and stroked her hair, and taught her first to weave, then to speak the language of Lórien. She had planned to accompany the envoy to Galadriel’s kingdom as an assistant, before Elrond had declared the pass unsafe for travel, and forbidden to all elves of his city on pain of exile.

“Anira,” he said, and she started upwards, and knelt at his feet.

“Lord,” she said. Her voice was soft, her cheeks streaked with tears. “I am so sorry.”

“My dear,” he said. “You must guide your prayers to the Valar, and pray that They will have mercy upon us.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, and then, a question which he had found surprising. “The Lord Elladan,” she said. “Is he well?”

“I’m going to speak with him,” he said. “You may help him by praying for the Valar’s guidance.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said. His words sounded fatuous even to himself, but as he hurried towards the twins’ rooms, he did not hear the sound of renewed weeping.

He found Elladan and Elrohir curled up together by the fire in their shared solar, like puppies, like wolves who gather to lick their wounds after a vicious battle is lost. Elladan lay with his head on his brother’s knee, his wound still bleeding, and Elrohir leaned against a low couch, his eyes suffused with tears. When he entered, Elladan looked as if he would rise, and Elrohir could not meet his eyes.

“Elladan,” he said. “You’re wounded.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Let me stitch it,” he said. He had brought healing supplies, because even though he had ordered his sons to seek out a healer, he had not expected them to. In certain ways they were not much like Celebrían at all; they hated the press and thrum of people, the constant questioning, the looks they were subject to as the twin sons of the Lord of Imladris. He sat next to Elladan, and poured his thin, clear spirits over the wound. His son’s jaw clenched but he said nothing about the agony his wound must be in. He worked steadily, slowly, cleaning out the dead flesh and binding the living together, so that the blood would stop flowing and begin to heal itself. “You said it was your fault,” he said. “You said you ought to have moved more quickly, you said it was laziness that kept you from finding your mother in time.”

“Yes,” Elladan said.

“If you want us gone,” Elrohir said. “We will go tonight. We were discussing that, before you entered.” They had not been speaking, but Elrond remembered what it was to have a twin. Sometimes, the other’s spirit seemed so indistinguishable from your own that words were unnecessary.

“You would have me lose my sons and my wife in one damned accident?” He asked, mildly. He kept his tone light, and he said the words without thinking about them. His voice did not quaver when he spoke of Celebrían. “Elladan, Elrohir, you saved her. If you had not found her, she would have perished in the cave. As it is, we can make her comfortable here. She will see your faces again, and Arwen’s, once she is recalled from the Greenwood. In a city filled with people who adore her, your mother will be able to relinquish her spirit to Mandos in peace.”

“But we ought to have-“ Elrohir began, but Elrond held up his hand for silence.

“You did exactly as you were trained to do. You were cautious, you were wise, you were not hasty with your preparations. You ensured that you would only ever encounter a manageable number of orcs. If I had wanted you to risk your lives fighting, I would have sent you out into the field with no training. As it is, my sons, you have rescued your mother from her torment. You will allow her to find peace before she passes.”

“Is there nothing you can do?” Elrohir asked, and, to Elrond’s surprise, Elladan turned to his brother with a half-snarl on his face.

“Shut up Elrohir,” he snapped. “Do you know what you’re asking him to do? Don’t you know what was done to her? Do you want her to live with that?”

“Her fëa is wounded, Elrohir,” he said, gently. “It has been all but severed from her body. That she survived at all is a testament to how strong her spirit is. Perhaps she had a vision that you would rescue her, and she forced herself to remain in her body, so that she could bid us all farewell. I wish that I could heal her, but I can only heal the body, and even that is never assured. That is why the wounded must rest, and change their bandages often, and eat.” This last he directed to Elladan, who met his eyes for only a second before dropping his gaze. “If you blame yourselves for what happened, you will be denying the truth of the matter, which is that there are dark forces stirring in this world, and they feel comfortable enough to kidnap an elven lady. The weak and the defenseless will need our protection in the coming years.”  
“I wish we could have stopped this,” Elladan said. “I would give my life-“

“No,” Elrond said. “No. You are my son, your life is worth as much to me as hers is. Any death is a tragedy, and a great one, but we have no control over these events. The suffering of others is not our fault, unless we abet its continuance, or cause it ourselves. Your life could not have saved hers, and losing you would have wounded many people. By me, by your brother and sister, by the city, you are beloved.” He thought suddenly of the young girl crying in the gardens outside, and he understood. “Life does not stop because a tragedy interrupts it. We must continue onwards, in spite of our pain, and force ourselves to ensure that no other person suffers what we do.”

“Yes Father,” Elladan said, his voice tearful, so like a child’s that it broke his heart. Elrohir whispered the words, and Elrond kissed their foreheads, and held their hands in his. They were his exact height, their hands were his hands, but the shape of their fingers belonged to Celebrían.

“Come to my chambers if you wish,” he said. He rose from his place beside his sons, and fled back to his own chambers, the lump in his throat overwhelming him. When he shut his door he felt his first tears come, like the few drops of rain that precipitate the beginning of a great storm. He had lain himself down on his bed, not even bothering to properly undress, and cried until his eyes were sealed shut in sleep.

In the middle of the night, his door opened. He expected Celebrían had worsened, and he prepared to rise and oversee her final hours, but instead, Elladan and Elrohir entered. They sat together, listening to the breathing of their mother across the hall, until the sun rose, and they with it.

In his head, Elrond had begun planning a funeral. No elf had ever survived what she had suffered.

* * *

“I do remember what I told them,” he said. “I told them it was not their fault. They were not negligent in assigning patrols to sweep the mountains, they did not allow their wife to journey with only a lightly armed escort.”

“Elrohir told me what you said,” Glorfindel says. “You told them that some fates are unavoidable.”

“True,” Elrond says. “But sometimes, our lack of caution does a fair amount of damage.”

“She does not blame you,” Glorfindel says. “As you yourself told your son, you do not have to bear the blame for evil unless you abet its existence.”

“Glor,” he says. “I was sworn to protect her. I was sworn to protect the elves in her guard, who were slaughtered and defiled. I failed in my one duty as a lord.”

“Elrond,” Glorfindel sighs. “You are the only one who sees it that way. I wish you and Celebrían would reconcile.”

“We are reconciled,” Elrond says. The lie is easy, and he says it with his lord’s voice, calm and assured. “All my problems have been resolved.” Glorfindel does not contradict him, but instead leads him down a steep, spiraling staircase to the lowest lever, where the prisons are. There are not many kept beneath the King’s palace in Tirion, since Aman is not comprised of beings who act in haste and rage, but evil happens, even in a land of peace. There is theft and robbery and sabotage and infighting, and, Elrond knows, murder. King Finarfin has an official executioner.

Elrond presents himself to the guard, and he is granted admittance. He pauses to adjust his robes, but a scuffle draws his eye, and he looks back to see Glorfindel, with a drawn dagger against the guard’s throat. “Glor,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“How this traitorous shit came to be here-“

“Please,” the guard says. “It wasn’t me-“

“I ought to kill you now,” Glorfindel says, and Elrond touches his arm.

“Glor,” he says. “He’s wearing Finarfin’s colors, you can’t kill the king’s man. Stand down.” Glorfindel glowers at him a moment, then sheaths his knife and stalks from the room, muttering curses.

The guard is a man who has a prominent scar across his face, so, he is someone from the old world. He does not wear armor, except for vambraces on his forearms. He is dressed in Finarfin’s colors, but on his shoulder he wears the badge of Gondolin.

“Who are you?” He asks, out of curiosity.

“I am the son of Salgant, the great traitor of Gondolin,” he says. His voice is heavy, and Elrond has to stop himself from gaping.

“I did not know Salgant had a son,” he says.

“Rather he didn’t,” the elf says. “He betrayed Turgon’s people and fled when he was sent to defend the Great Market. Lord Glorfindel died because of my father.”

“Where were you when Gondolin fell?” Elrond asks. The man scoffs, and squares his shoulders, and spits on the floor.

“Hunting. I had a trial just like your prisoner, when I arrived here. They thought perhaps my father told me what was to happen, and he sent me out of the city to be safe. But when I returned through the secret pass, some years after I left, I found a smoking ruin, and everyone I loved was dead, and my houses was erased and all good memories of my father died when he betrayed our people. I thought everyone was dead, I did not know about Idril’s Pass. I wandered half-crazed through the wilderness, I was prepared to drive my sword into my chest when I came upon a small settlement of elves who told me that Idril’s son yet lived, and I thought I would present myself to him and serve him, since I remembered he had been fond of my father, but when I showed my face I was cursed and called Kintraitor, and I was challenged to a duel by one of the few lords of Gondolin left alive, and he would have killed me if your father had not interposed his sword and sent me to search Valinor, for memory of my father, who told him stories. But so many believe that I lie-”

“You don’t have to justify yourself,” Elrond says. “I know you are not lying.”

“You do?” The man asks.

“I do,” he says. The guard smiles slightly.

“I am glad you have found service here,” Elrond says. “And I pray that in time others will come to believe you as I do.” The man dips his head, and unlocks the door that leads to Maglor’s cell.

The elf is sitting against the stone wall, draped in a thin blanket, his eyes shut against the dim lamp that sputters in its sconce on the wall. He opens his eyes when Elrond enters, but he says nothing. Elrond sits beside him, healing supplies in hand.

“How did you injure your shoulder?” He asks. Maglor shrugs, slightly, and winces at the pain the movement causes. “May I see?” Maglor drops the thin blanket, and carefully, using a Healer’s touch, Elrond eases his ragged shirt from his body. The swelling of broken ribs is evident, but upon closer inspection, he realizes that Maglor’s shoulder is simply dislocated. “How long has it been hurt?” He asks. Maglor taught him how to set dislocated joints, and he finds it strange that the elf has failed to heal his own injuries. Certainly it is a painful process, but Elrond has been forced to set his own shoulder a half dozen times, and it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. “I’m going to set it,” he says. “I’ll count down for you if you want me to.”

“Why are you here?” Maglor asks. “Why did you come?”

“I came for you,” Elrond says. “I saw you were injured and I did not want you to suffer.”

“What if I want to suffer?” Maglor asks. “I wish you hadn’t listened to Nerdanel. I wish you’d let me be! Can’t you let them toss me off the side of a cliff? I want to die.” Elrond pulls the elf’s arm straight, and with practiced hands, guides the ball of the joint into his shoulder’s socket.

“You’ve suffered enough,” Elrond says. “I’ll not see another elf slain while I yet live.”

“I deserve to die. When I am summoned to give my testimony, I’ll tell them that. I’ll tell them about the elves I slew. In the beginning it was very difficult. It was a work of will to stick my sword into an elf’s neck. But by the time we took Sirion, it was easy as breathing. If we’d kept at it, maybe we could’ve accustomed ourselves to rape.” Elrond stiffens at these words, and the fury that skulks behind the icy chill of his demeanor rose in a red wave of hatred.

“If you ever say anything like that again-“

“I heard your wife was raped,” Maglor says. “By a whole pack of orcs. How does it feel, knowing you’ve shared her-“

“Say another word and I’ll dislocate your shoulder again,” he says, his voice low. The tide of his fury breaks against the coldness of his heart. Maglor laughs, but his laugh is not the mournful bells that Elrond remembers, it is the sound of a grindstone grating against a sword. Maglor wants him to leave him alone, to leave him to the judgement of the Council of the Eldar, to the executioner’s sword, or noose, or poison, or whatever method they use in Valinor to snuff out an elf’s spirit. Perhaps, once, he would have left, but he is so sick of death and suffering, so tired of ruling by the might of his sword, he is war-weary, and he does not want anyone to suffer.

“Why not run me through?”

“I follow the Old Laws,” he says. “I owe you my protection, as my kinsman and my father. If you want to hurt me, if you want to speak of my wife’s rape, then speak of it. Your words will tear out my heart, and I will hate you, but I will perform my duty.”

“You always were the dutiful one,” Maglor mutters. “Your brother was better than you at weapons, and at words, and he was handsomer-“

“We were twins.”

“Doesn’t matter. He had a confidence you still do not. He knew he could plummet off a cliff and still not injure himself.”

“That’s a lie, though.”

“Not to him. But he was better than you at everything, except music. By Illúvatar, your voice was fine. And Healing, you were better at Healing. I wish I could have taught you better. You understood my world, the world of Valinor. You wanted to follow the Old Laws, before you even understood them. You wore your duties like some men wear gems.”

“Perhaps I was more aware of my duties because of how I failed in them,” Elrond says.

“You’ve more duties accomplished in your life than most I know. Why are you here, when you should be feasting? Why are you defending me, when you should be judging me? Why didn’t you run me through when I spoke of your wife?”

“I can’t,” Elrond says. “I can’t do anything anymore. I feel impotent.”

“You’re doing something now,” Maglor says. Elrond pours his clear spirits over Maglor’s battered hands, and the elf does not wince, despite the agony. “I can’t feel them,” Maglor says. “Where I grasped the Silmaril in both hands, I have only dead flesh.”

“I will cut it out,” Elrond says. He is good at surgery, at stitching, at pruning back infection and disease. “Perhaps I can encourage new skin to grow over the old.”

“Did I teach you that?” Maglor asks.

“No,” Elrond says. “It was another.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an awful lot of sexual content in this chapter, and it's a lot more positive than what we've seen before. This chapter is also slightly shorter than average, to balance out the longer chapters. Thank you to everyone who reads and leaves kudos and especially who comments. You guys make my day and make me so happy! I'd probably be writing this story regardless, but seeing your positive responses makes me thrilled, and your engagement with my works helps me to better my writing.

There are marshes outside Imladris. The ground is boggy and fly-sodden and the earth rises up to suck the incautious down to their doom. Elves are light-footed by nature, and face little danger from quicksand and peat, but even the finest elven steed can be dragged down by the clogging pull of muck and deep water. There is one path through the marsh, and it is long and winding and circuitous. Once, Elrond had thought the water entirely stagnant, but Gil-Galad told him, off-hand and without thinking much of it, that very little water actually stands still.

“Water runs,” he had said. “It follows the easiest road. Sometimes that road is spread out, and the water is very slow in arriving at its destination, but sometimes the road is a roaring cataract, and the sea comes in sight scarcely after the journey is begun.” It had been a metaphor for something, the planting of an orchard, perhaps, or the purging of orcs from Eregion, but Elrond had been taken by the image. Maedhros had once told him that for an elf with Visions he was incredibly single-minded, and Elrond had left Lindon a full month early to journey out into his marshes and find out whether his water ran seaward.

Initially he had seen only stagnant marshland, stinking in the heat of the high summer sun. He had dragged a protesting Celebrían out with him. “Lord Elrond,” she had said. “I don’t know why you’re making me do this. It matters nothing to me whether a marsh is stagnant water, or water running so slowly it may as well be stagnant. We have work to accomplish,”

“I know, my friend,” he had said. That was when he was in love with her, but so terrified by visions of his own death that he could not bring himself to speak to her. He had seen himself with his heart cut out of his chest, an open, jagged, cruel gash and broken ribs sticking up between punctured skin and blackened lungs. He could not leave her alone in the world, if she truly did love him. He could not lie with her, perhaps sire a child by her, and leave her to raise their babe alone.

Besides, he supposed she would marry someone else. He was the expected heir of Gil-Galad, but he was quiet and silent even when he was merry, and although he had a beautiful voice, he did not sing except when he Healed, or when it was late at night, and the fires burned low, and the few elves that remained in the Hall of Fire were half in their waking dreams already. He hated how, when he rose at feasts to sing Songs of Blessing, the elves turned to him with rapt eyes and pricked ears, how they watched him as lambs watch an eagle. “I love you,” he wanted to scream. “I want only what is best for you, I want you to love me as a father, not fear me as a king.” But instead he remained silent, and glowered whenever an inebriated elf inevitably suggested he sing them a song from the Old Days.

But he had asked her to come with him to inspect his marshes, and she had agreed. They were good friends, after all, and there was not much to accomplish, besides the constant inspections of soldiers and barracks and wounded elves and spears and swords and shields, and all of those things had to be done so frequently that the task was never truly finished. He had made a boat out of wood scraps, complete with a swan-prow, and he had set it on the marshy water and watched as it bobbed happily, swaying a little in the wind.

“Have you thought about draining them?” She asks. “We could use these open lands for farming.” Her use of the plural pleased him.

“Perhaps in times of peace,” he says. “I’ve seen examples of how some elves drained swampland, and I’d like to expand our production so we can be completely self-sufficient, but Imladris won’t be much of a secret if there are fields of crops growing in the open.”

“Once we defeat the Enemy, I’ll help you,” she says. “Celebrimbor and I once made a river change its course, just for fun, and because we could. It shouldn’t be too hard to dig trenches below the water, and guide it all into a channel downhill, and then that would be the end of this accursed place.” She swatted at a mosquito, and her hand came away red with her own blood. The biting stab of fear he felt, like the cut of a chisel into the hand while wood-working, was unexpected. A Vision fluttered before him and fell away to nothingness.

“You don’t want to return to your parents?” He asks. They had sent her to him for polishing; they wanted him to make her into a statesman and a scholar, but he had never been polished himself, and instead of teaching her what he himself had never learned, he dragged her with him to meetings and councils and dinners and dances and swamps.

“Of course, if you’ve tired of my incessant questions and lack of manners, I’ll leave,” she said. “I did not mean to suggest I would always have a place in your Court. But-“

“You’re welcome here,” he said. “For as long as you want to stay, you may.”

“You may regret saying that,” she said. “I love your people, and your city. Even your disgusting marshland is endearing. You’ll have to exile me before I am willing to leave.”

He knows now that she wanted him to kiss her, when she said that. He had wanted nothing more. But instead he had turned back to the swamp, and had almost jumped in excitement. Drawn by a slight but unmistakable current, the boat had moved westwards, towards the far distant ocean. Gil-Galad had been right after all.

______________________________________________________________________________

It had been a beautiful wedding, on a spring day full of sunlight and flowers, and he almost did not miss Gil-Galad, so glad did he feel. His city was decked in bright colors, and his banners and hers waved in the wind, and he wore the gems he had hidden away deep in his storerooms, and he gave her the finest of all of them, made with the light of the moon and the stars. It glowed on her chest where it hung suspended between neck and bosom, like a hanging man is suspended between heaven and earth by his noose. The thought made him shiver in its bleakness, but it came with no flash of Vision, or so he thought. She was robed in cloth woven from strands of gold, and she wore shoes of beaten gold, but she had interspersed little rubies in the fabric, so that when she turned and caught the sunlight, she shimmered like a blazing inferno. He had never seen her so beautiful.

“You’re very handsome,” she had told him when he stood beside her, and prepared to exchange her silver ring for a ring of gold. She said it softly, in a little-used dialect spoken by the children of the remnants of Doriath’s western march. He had taught it to her because, back in the days of war, they had looked for any excuse to be near each other. He cannot remember even the color of his own robes. Dark blue, he supposes, the color of his city, of pure aether, of his Ring. “You’re probably more so without your clothing.” He flushed at this, and she laughed softly. She delighted in making him blush.

“I was raised by Fëanorians,” he had protested, during their engagement. “I didn’t even know how elflings were made, until Elros and I stumbled across a pair of elves dallying in the forest. We were almost grown.”

“Surely you’d seen horses, and cows, and pigs, and dogs,” she had said. He remembers the feeling of his hand in her silver hair, and the way she shivered when he pulled her tortoise-shell comb through a slight snarl.

“Of course,” he had said. “But applied logic is not a strength of mine. When I asked Elros what they were doing, he laughed so hard he cried.”

“I’ll teach you,” she had said. “It’s finally my turn to be the teacher.” She had been sitting at his feet, but she turned to face him, and kissed his cheek, then his neck, then she bit, delicately, at the tip of his ear.

“Cel,” he had sighed. “A few more months and all will be permitted.”

“We could just ignore the rules,” she said. “We would hardly be the first.”

“As Lord, it’s my duty to provide myself as a moral example-“ her hands found him through the heavy layers of his robe, and he had to swallow his words to stop himself from crying out as she slipped a soft, gentle hand beneath the heavy fabric, and wrapped her fingers around him.

“Shall I postpone this until our wedding?” She had asked. He looked at her, at the way her long, loose hair shimmered in the light of his solar, at the bright flint in her eyes.

“Perhaps, just so long as we do not accomplish the act of generation, it may be permitted-“

“Oh Elrond,” she had sighed, her voice soft. “My dear half-elf, you know more languages than I can count, and it shows in your eternal poetry. Tell me about the act of generation you want to perform with me.” He laughed at her words, and drew her up, and pressed his lips to hers, but he had not let her touch him further.

Standing beside her, he felt like the moon in the sun’s shadow, he felt like Tirion, chasing uselessly after the bright light of Arien. But when she smiled at him, softly and shyly. “I still can’t believe you want to marry me,” she had said, and it was all he could do to only give her a demure kiss on her cheek, when the blood boiled in his veins and his heart swelled. He looked at her, and at her parents, and out across his city, assembled and as garrulous as a flock of birds at a watering hole, and he realized with a tinge of sorrow that the century and more since Gil-Galad’s death had moved so quickly he had scarcely noticed his passage. He kissed her cheek, and found it soft and warm beneath his lips.

“Nor I you,” he said.

They had sworn the oaths, and bound their Houses together, and she had renounced her allegiance to Lothlórien, and had sworn a new oath to serve Imladris before any other city, and to keep its secrets even from members of her own blood. Then he had welcomed her into the Council of Imladris, and given her a Rod of Office, and had granted her the Right of Oversight, and then she had given her name to the Register of Genealogies as Celebrían Celeborniel, wife of Elrond Eärendilion, Lord of Imladris, and then they had feasted. It had been the largest feast since Gil-Galad’s funeral games, which Elrond had hosted for the soldiers before he officially disbanded them. There were a hundred deer slaughtered just for the wedding dinner, and barrels and barrels of wine, and cows and swine and half the winter harvest, so much food that he could scarcely believe they had once worried about starving to death. They shared a plate, and when he lifted a chunk of bread fresh from the ovens to her lips, she met his eyes and licked the spill of gravy from his finger, and bit into the bread, and put her hand over his own, and fed him after her. They drank from a shared cup, and the new weight of the gold ring on his finger pleased him, even when it clinked loudly against the cup’s side.

They danced the first of the dances, wheeling in a circle too swiftly for mortal eyes to comprehend, spinning about each other, reaching and drawing away. After the final step, his people joined them in the circles, whirling and stomping and singing in time to the lyre-music that quavered high above their heads. After a while, he and Celebrían drew away to the side to watch the spectacle, and he held her hand in his, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, and he touched her hair, and he pressed a soft kiss to her ear, and she shifted against him.

“What do you think?” He asked her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “If only Gil-Galad and Oropher could be here, I would be perfectly happy.”

“It’s all for us,” he said. “Everything.” The music shifted to a slower song, and a deep elf’s voice sounded above the music, dreadful as the sound of war-trumpets in a losing battle. It was a song about the War of Wrath, about the War Councils where the elves assumed loss was inevitable, but in the midst of the song, a female voice joined the male, and spoke of the aid of the Valar, and the music jumped three octaves to accompany her bright voice as she sang of Eärendil’s ship winging its way across the sky. “Viniglot, wrath’s victory vanishes, receding while westward/luminous light leaps heavenward helped from Valinor-“

“I wish I could have seen his star rise,” she sighed. “I wish I could have seen the Valar come to save us all.”

“We thought we would die,” he says. “Elros and I amended our epigraphs whenever we did something particularly valiant, or stupid. Once he wrote me one in Maglor’s trimeter about a pie I stole for us from the kitchens.” She laughed, and pressed her body close to his. The night was warm, but not humid, and the warmth she provided was comforting to him, like the warmth of a hot brick in a frigid bed. He sat for a while, watching the dancers wheel about. “I wish you could have met Elros,” he said, but when he looked at her, he saw she had drifted into her dreams in his arms. “He would have liked you.” He said, more softly. “So would Maglor and Maedhros.” A musician pounded a deep-toned drum, and she stirred in his arms, and stretched, and opened her cornflower eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “I only meant to rest, but I suppose I’m tired from all the preparations.”

“Me too,” he said. He kissed her forehead, then her lips. They parted slightly, and he could taste the wine on her breath, and smell the sweet scent of the rich perfume she wore. He kissed her again, and she turned towards him, pliant and soft in his arms.

“Do you want to go to bed?” She asked him. He felt the tide of his lust rise around him, and he had to force himself to pull away from her.

“Are you tired?” He asked. She laughed, and took him by his hand, and rose.

In their chambers, she shut their door against the noise and the music, which still hummed faintly through the stone floor, and she rose up onto her toes and pressed her lips against his, and he bent his head and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her as he had wanted to all day. He slid his tongue into her mouth, and his hands fiddled with her elaborately braided hair. He pulled a pin loose, then another, and she moaned as he freed her long braids and pressed her against the door to their chambers.

“Elrond,” she gasped when he pulled away. “Elrond, don’t stop.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. He let his fingers trace the plane of her heaving chest, he lingered on the swells of her beasts, with his other hand, he undid the elaborate braids and allowed her hair to fall loose, down to the middle of her back. She kissed him fiercely, and he began the long process of untying her dress’ many laces. “Did you make this to tease me?” He murmured as he tried to undo a particularly difficult knot at the base of her bodice.

“Gods, Elrond, rip it off me if you can’t undo them-“

“That’s wasteful,” he said. “It would be a horrible pity to ruin such a piece of art.” He kissed her neck, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He pulled the knot loose, and began to work on the next one. She unclasped his cloak and allowed it to fall to the ground, and she touched his most recent scar, received during the war. It had wept for almost ten years, the work of a poisoned blade and an inept healer, before he had finally managed to close it. Now it was a raised red line. His heart stuttered at the feeling of her hands on his skin. He kissed her neck, her chest, the swell of her breasts, and she pulled his heavy robes from his body, and he found the last knot and sent her dress tumbling, and they stood in a pool of discarded clothing, in the light of the moon that shone through the open door to the gardens beyond. He kissed her again, more gently, savoring the taste of her tongue on his lips, then he bent his head and kissed her breast, and took it in his mouth, first one and then the other. She sagged against the door as his fingers splayed lower down her body, between her legs. She arched into his touch, her eyes shut, but when he kissed her lips, she opened them, and he saw the dark glow of desire in their depths.

“Gods, Elrond,” she murmured.

“Shall we go to bed?” He asked. She nodded, and he swept her off her feet. She weighed almost as much as his armor. He kissed her nose, her lips, and as he placed her on his bed, their bed, he heard the swell of the music shift, and she groaned.

“I hate this song,” she said. “I hate the legend of Nimloth.” He kissed her stomach, then moved lower, and her hands tanged in his hair. He kissed her, and touched her, and when at last he realized his own desire and slid into her, she pulled him close to her, so close that the silhouettes of their bodies might have appeared to be one, and she pressed him against her chest, and he felt, on the very edges of his spirit, the touch of her own, bright as lightning in the western sky.

Afterwards she had lain in his arms. The sweat on their skin dried in the spring air, and when she began to shiver, he drew a blanket around themselves, and held her against his chest. The moon had begun to set, but the singing and dancing had only grown louder, and occasionally they would hear a particularly enthusiastic elf propose a toast, and laugh about it. She traced his scarred body with her fingers, touching lightly, never lingering.

“How long do we have before we are summoned to perform our duties?” She asked.

“Until midday, I would imagine,” he responded. He was content to simply lie and look at her, after he had spent so many years dreaming of her.

“Tell me something,” she said. He whispered to her in the Fëanorian dialect of Finwë’s Quenya, the first language he had learned to read, the first he remembered speaking. “Tell me something I can understand,” she protested.

“I said I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said. “I love you more than I love the stars, more than light, more than the great expanse of the sea.” But he had not said that he loved her. He told her, in Fëanorian Quenya, that he could not bear to lose her. Sometimes he thinks about what he said to her, and he wonders whether a part of him had foreseen and ignored her agonies to come. What had he known, that had driven him to tell her that?

He thinks of her lips on his, after he said those words. He had held her tightly, but there had been no fear in his heart. He had not spoken from a place of prophecy, but a place of truth. After all, he had not borne her loss well at all.

He thinks on these things as he rides through the silent city to Nimloth's house, his hands sticky with Maglor's blood. He feels himself stir beneath his robes, and the thought of his wife asleep in Finarfin's palace, far removed from his embrace, sends a stab of longing through him, so sharp, so unexpected, that he almost wheels the horse around. But it is almost dawn, and he has a case to prepare, so he ignores the unfamiliar discomfort of unsated lust, and sets his mind to solve the problem of saving Maglor.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of suicide.

“It was a time of famine,” Elrond says. His voice is low and even, softer than his father’s sharp accusations, and he sees the elves shift to hear him better. His words linger in the open space between the Council and himself. “Those of us who lived in Middle Earth remember the horrors of a bad harvest, but if you did not live in the First Age, you cannot imagine the suffering this famine brought. The sun stood in the sky without moving, and for ten years, or almost as long, there was no rain. Clouds scudded away without accumulating, cows perished in the fields from thirst, the horses lost their fleetness and went lame from hunger, we ate the scraps we formerly would not have fed our pigs. We ate skin-and-bone dogs, we scoured the forest for berries picked over by birds long fled, and when that food failed, we turned our arrows towards the rats that skulked in the shadows. When we exhausted the supply of rats, we turned to stinging nettle and flower bulbs, orache and caper. We thought we suffered, but Maglor and I rode into the countryside, and saw elves boiling grass to eat, since there was nothing else.

“I was almost a Healer then, I had only a few years left of training, in surgery and in the sacred Rites that honor the Valar. I was Maglor’s student, the first he ever trained, and before the years of dearth, he meant to take me out into the wilds to complete my course with practical application. But in the end, that was not necessary. Those with bad injuries were so weak that they died of them.

“I remember we came to a small village. They held funerals for fourteen elves in the months before our arrival, children and the sickly, and when Maglor and I rode in on our horses, thin and undernourished, subsisting on the grass that grows by the wayside, we met a woman who had been dragged before the Council, such as it was, to face judgement. She had borne a child, but her milk had not come in, and the child had perished.”

“Lord Elrond,” Finarfin says. “I have two complaints: firstly, what purpose has this story, beyond a proof of your skill as an orator? Secondly, do you mean that this woman killed her own child? Clarity is a virtue.”

“I am defending Lord Maglor, as is my duty, High King,” Elrond says. “And this story provides important context for my argument. And as I said, the woman was to be judged because her milk did not come in, and her child perished.”

“There is nothing in the High Laws that even suggests a penalty for this,” Finarfin says. Elrond dips his head.

“A new method of logic was invented to extrapolate appropriate duties and penalties from the known laws, once Goldolin fell. It was widely posited that the Valar blessed the dutiful, and cursed the wicked. I myself studied this mode of reasoning, at the time, I believed it. The woman was to blame for a lack of piety, and her child suffered as a result. When Maglor saw they meant to kill her, he interposed himself as their Lord and demanded they free her. We were weak with hunger, but his Court had stored provisions, so, before we had distributed them to the starving around us, we had eaten better than most. But even though he presented them with the seal of his office, they refused to change their verdict. So, he demanded that the woman ask for him as advocate, but she refused.”

“Lord Elrond,” Finarfin says. “If you are attempting to draw an allegory-“

“High King,” Galadriel says. “I believe this tale is relevant to the trial.”

“I trust your judgement, Artanis,” Finarfin says. She shuts her eyes, and Elrond expects her to rise in thunder and fury and demand that her father call her by her name, but she remains silent. Elrond dips his head to her, and he catches Celebrían’s eye. She smiles encouragingly at him. Does she know the ending of this story? He must have told it to her, some night before dawn, lying with her body in his arms. He must have told her of the woman, perhaps when she herself was pregnant with their sons. Had she told her mother, or had he, or had Galadriel gleaned it from his mind, bound as they had been by the power of their Rings?

“The woman refused to call upon Maglor for her advocate. He begged her to, he spoke with her alone, he promised her that he would find food enough for his people, he promised that he would protect her from vengeance, and she laughed. She laughed at his offer for salvation.

“We need food now,” she said. “And there are too many mouths. I have not the strength to walk into the wilderness, I am still weak from childbirth. I can provide no food to my people, I can only eat until I am healed. My parents bore me in this land, but I am prepared to leave it, so that others may remain. Perhaps the Valar will be merciful to me, and save me as you cannot.”

“Maglor went to the Council and told them that if they executed the woman, he would have them skinned alive. Some of them had seen him gut an elf without flinching, I had too, we believed him. He gave the elves our horses to eat, which were of Fëanor’s herd, and in better times would have been worth their weight in gold twice over. We watched them slaughter our mounts, and as the woman ate the sweet flesh, she wept for the dead child, and Maglor stood in the shadows weeping, and I could not console him. What could I say? The Logic clearly enumerated the cause of our sufferings. Maglor was Lord of the land, along with Maedhros. He had angered the Valar. They were punishing him through his people. He ordered me to return to Amon Ereb, and seek out Maedhros, who was hunting for game far afield, and deliver him a message about our progress.

“I did not believe him when he told me his purpose was to take a river-route, and see if he could find a shoal of fish. I pretended to leave, but I had learned woodscraft from the Fëanorians, and I had skill enough to double back and remain just out of Maglor’s sight. I was young, and strong, and I realize now that he was generous with my portions of our meager food, and sparing with his own. I saw myself as invincible in those days.

“I followed him as he journeyed deep into the mountains. He ate nothing, and drank only a little. I brewed my healing herbs into small soups, and dug worms up from the dry ground, and hungered. Maglor’s pace weakened, and I feared a predator might come upon him and devour him, and then, when the hunger truly began to twist within me, and I felt my warrior’s muscles collapse inwards, I began to hope a wolf would try to eat him, just so I could have a chance to shoot a beast and enjoy meat again.

He shot a rabbit, a lucky blow, but he left it lying where it was, and that was when I knew he knew I was following him. I picked the rabbit up - I was so hungry I almost ate it raw - and sheepishly trailed after him, like a kicked dog comes crawling to a beloved master. He built a fire, there was dry wood enough, and I cleaned and skewered the rabbit, which was scrawny and mostly bones, and cooked it over the fire.

“I split it in half, and offered him the food, but he refused. A better man would have refused to touch the meat, and I did press him to accept it, but I was so hungry that I ate his portion, even down to the bones. The food pierced my stomach like a spear thrust, and Maglor must have known I could not bear the sudden fullness after so many weeks of want, because he kissed my forehead, and left me his pack of supplies, which was almost half full, and struck out again. I was in such agony that I could not follow.

After a day I felt much stronger, though still weak and dizzy and queasy, and I followed his trail, and I found him hanging, suspended halfway between earth and heaven.” Elrond sees a number of the Council members make the sign to ward off evil, and he sees in his mind the image of Maglor swaying in the breeze like some horrible banner of the Enemy. He had hung heavily, and his feet did not move.

“He must have known I would find him, because he had taken pains to cover himself in fronds, and he looked almost peaceful. I cut the rope that bound him to the tree, and I forced air into his lungs, and I trickled our precious water down his throat, and when he opened his eyes and saw me, he began to cry.

“What have you done?” He asked. His tears fell to the dry earth and landed on the dust, but the ground was too parched to accept them. His voice was hoarse. “Elrond, Elrond you’ve ruined my offering.”

“Maglor,” I said. I wanted to call him Father, but I did not dare. “Maglor, we will find food for our people. You must have hope.”

“The syllogism demands a conclusion, and Logic demands reasoning,” he said. “The sins of the King are expiated by the suffering of his people. If my death could revoke this drought and famine, then I ought to fulfill my duty as my people’s lord.”

“Maglor,” I said. “The Valar do not want your death. They would have struck you down earlier if they did. They could have taken you as you hung, before I arrived.” I was stronger than him, and I found a trickle of water, and boiled us both a meal, and I forced his portion into his lips. We sat, wondering what to do in the oppressive heat. A part of me wondered whether Maglor’s death would save us all. Surely, I told myself, if the Valar wanted my death, I would yield to them as a son yields to his father. Maglor could not meet my eyes, and I did not know what to say to him, because I had gone against his wishes as my lord, and I had disobeyed him by following him, but in doing so, I had saved his life...

“But close to nightfall, the heat began to cool, and storm clouds covered the sky, and grew darker, and I scarcely had time to build us a shelter of downed branches when the first lightning strike hit the ground, and the rain began to fall. We stood in it, chilled and refreshed, we laughed until there were tears in our eyes, and Maglor bent his knees and pressed his face into the mud, westwards, towards Valinor, and he prayed. No bolt of lightning struck him. Only the rain fell, and after the rain, the coolness of the night, and after that, the warm yellow sun, which smiled at us from every drop of dew. After that, the drought was broken, and after that, the famine.

“Surely you understand my confusion then, concerning this trial. Maglor offered himself, body and soul, to the Valar, and they did not seek his life. Who are we to circumvent their wishes?”

There is silence when he finishes, except for a low sob. His wife weeps in her chair, heartbreaking, racking sobs, and Galadriel takes her hand, but Elrond can see this is no comfort. He catches Finarfin’s eye and pleads with him to recess the Court, even though he knows that Eärendil has the right to respond. It would be unjust for the King to end the proceedings early, but-

“High King,” His father says. “I seek a respite.”

“Granted,” Finarfin says, and Elrond bows to the Court, and kisses Maglor’s tear-tracked cheeks, but when he turns to comfort his wife, he sees that she has vanished down some passageway. The Council members allow him to move through their midst, and he steadfastly avoids their eyes. Gil-Galad has sent him an invitation to dinner every night for close to a month, and every night he has declined.

He finds her in the far gardens. He has learned the twisting routes of the palace, and he expects her to seek out the shade of trees when she is sorrowful. Whenever they fought in Imladris, he would always find her with her feet dipped in the creek that ran through their gardens, her hair caught up and tangled by the wind, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

She is sitting on a knoll, her head in resting in her palm, and he goes to her.

“Celebrían?” He asks, softly, and she turns to him.

“Elrond,” she says. Her eyes, always so bright and merry, brim with fresh agony. He takes her hand and finds it frigid. “How did you find me?”

“We were married for millennia,” he says. She smiles at him, but her smile crumples, and he sits beside her.

“You never told me that story,” she says. “Elrond, I am so sorry.”

“It’s long past-“

“Elrond, it’s not a lord’s job to suffer for his people. The world’s not structured so that only one person need suffer for many. Elrond, I have not been able to understand your reticence towards me, but now-“

“It’s nothing-“ he begins, but she stops him.

“Elrond,” she says. “Do you think you ought to have borne what happened to me?”

“Of course I do,” he says. “I have spent every moment since the twins found you wishing our places had been exchanged.”

“I don’t want that,” she says. “Elrond, my love, I could not bear it to see you injured.”

“And how am I supposed to feel?” He asks. “What comfort is there for me, knowing how you suffered? The marks of your anguish accuse me.”

“I do not,” she says. “If I had a choice of suffering or letting you suffer, I would always choose the former.”

“Don’t say that,” he implores her. A tear falls into his hand, and he does not know whether it is his or hers.

“I cannot bear seeing you wounded,” she says. “Elrond, I wish we could go back. I want to be young and happy, with three darling children and a beautiful city and a husband who does not tremble to embrace me, I want to be able to look at myself naked and not see the awful scars, I want to embrace my daughter-“

“I want that too,” he says. She is aching, he can see that, and his worry for her overcomes his fear. He presses her into his shoulder, and wraps his arms around her, and she cries into his neck. “Arwen longed for you,” he says. “She asked me if you would begrudge her her choice.”

“I don’t,” Celebrían says. “I can’t. Love demands no easy sacrifices, but I wish I could have seen her on her wedding day.”

“She was beautiful,” he tells her. His daughter’s skin had been icy cold, and her eyes equal parts merry and weary, and she had clung to him and whispered to him in Sindarin about her hopes, and he had held her and felt the dark roots of mortality winding through her frail body.

“You smell different,” she says, and he almost laughs. “In Imladris you always smelled of woodsmoke and iron and bitter herbs, but now you smell like old books and perfumed sconces.”

“I don’t even have armor,” he says. “I gave mine to Arwen, for her son. And when I am not in Court, I am reading.”

“If you ever grow bored of reading in Nerdanel’s house, or in the library, you are welcome to read with me,” she says. “I won’t ask you to lie with me, Elrond, not until you’re ready. I feel terribly about the night of the feast-“

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t. I wanted to be with you, I want to, I just need time.”

“I know,” she says. “I have been here for so long, I forgot you too would need healing. But if you would like to read with me, I will gladly have you.”

“Alright,” he says. Clouds are gathering on the horizon, rain-pregnant and ominous, clouds straight from his story. When the first drop falls, he expects her to rise and seek shelter, but she remains, and he drapes his cloak around the both of them. Her body is close and warm against his own, and her hand in his is soft. The rain beats on their heads, and the ground beneath them turns to mud, and the storm thunders overhead. A bolt of lightning touches the ground in the distance, and thunder rattles the bones in his chest. He can feel the pulse of her heart in her hand.

“It’s different here,” she says. Her voice is soft, but he can hear her because her lips are by his ear. In a sudden flash of lightning, he imagines her lips pressed against his ear, and he shudders from want. “Immortality feels different. It’s like those stories mortals used to tell about finding an elf-ring or a barrow, and being so swept up by our people that they do not perish, but live forever, dancing to our music. It’s paradise, but I’m so afraid that something will happen, some dreadful evil, and it will all be shattered.”

“I fear that too,” he says. He turns his mouth towards her ear, and his nose brushes against her cheek, and she shivers. “I’m afraid of this perfection. It’s like a beguilement of the Enemy.”

“I felt that way about you, at first,” she says. “When my parents first sent me to you, I thought you would hate me and think me stupid, because I was younger and knew almost nothing. But you were always so kind to me, and you always invited me to do whatever you were doing. I remember once you took me with you to find out if the water in the swamps was truly stagnant. But I still feared that you laughed about me behind my back, because I was nothing like my mother or my father, and I did not understand everything you taught me. I wanted so much to be like you, that I did not realize until much later than I should have that I loved you, and by then we all thought we would perish.”

“But we lived,” he says. “And we live still.” He can scarcely hear himself above the sound of torrential rain. Beneath their shared cloak, it is warm from their exhaled breaths. He brushes his thumb against her chin, and she leans into his touch. The rain is so loud he cannot hear his own thoughts, he can only feel the pulse of blood in his body

“Elrond,” she says. “I want to kiss you.”

“I want to kiss you,” he says. It feels alien, wanting her, but the world feels alien in the rain, and he cannot think about why he should not touch her. She presses her lips to his, and he opens his mouth as she slips in her tongue, and he presses her body against his. Their cape slips, and the rain stings his eyes, so he shuts them and feels her touch against his own, the warmth of her hands, the chill of the raindrops, the ground slushy beneath him, the taste of her tongue, of her mouth, the heat of the want that surges up in his body, carrying him like a riptide in a rough sea. He does not fight his lust, he sinks into it, he embraces her and melds his mouth to hers.

“I never stopped loving you,” he tells her, or perhaps he only thinks the words. She is warm and gentle when she touches him, exploring the planes of his body with searching hands. She presses kisses to his face and neck, and tangles her hands in his dripping hair. He cannot tell sweat from rain, or rain from tears.

“Nor I you,” she says. They lie for a time in the wet of the rainwater, tangled round each other but she begins to shiver, so he helps her to her feet and wraps his arms around her, and they make their way across the gardens to her chambers, dripping puddles in their wake. She sends a servant to draw them a bath, and he sheds his cloak and hangs it before her fire, and she takes off her now nearly see-through silk dress. He has not truly looked at her body in centuries. He sees the twisting of her scars, but they are faint, and he expects that in time they will disappear entirely. He struggles out of his own damp robes, and she eyes him contemplatively, and traces the scars he received after her departure. He has a nasty one down his side, from his fifth rib to his thigh, received during a brutal ambush. Her fingers are warm against his frozen skin. She touches the dagger wound above his heart, a gift from an elf swayed to the Enemy’s cause by promise of a woman wed to another. She brushes the arrow mark on his arm, an accident while hunting, and the less severe injuries that dot his body ache at the promise of her touch. She takes his hands, and she sees the stigma on his arm, the moment of weakness, the hatred and terror that he felt when he plunged the dagger into his veins, and then the fear and the hate and the renewed terror for his children that he felt when he withdrew it, and bound the wound, and hid it away, and she says nothing. She kisses this injury, an absolution, a blessing.

“My Elrond,” she says. Her voice is tender, the voice she uses when talking to children and wounded birds. “I mourn for what was done to us, but we are here, together, at the end of it all, and I am grateful for that.”

“As am I,” he says. She kisses him, and she melds her body with his own, and he feels again the uncertain riptide of his lust, drawing him towards her in an unescapable current. She touches him, and he shudders in pleasure beneath her touch, and he finds he has no desire to pull away from her hand against him.

* * *

He lies with her in her bed, her head on his shoulder, watching the stars wheel above them. Tomorrow is his father’s day to speak against Maglor, and after that will be his turn, on and on until all the stories have been recounted, and all the witnesses have been examined, and all the horrors of the old world have been examined. After that, the Council will retire to make their decision, and after that will be the execution, or the exoneration. At least, for the most part, the people no longer cry for vengeance.

“Are you worried?” She asks him.

“A little,” he says. “Yes. I worry that this will come to naught.”

“I find your testimony moving,” she says. “Objectively, not just because I am your wife. Of course I’ve heard most of these stories before, but to hear them together, one after the other, it changes the perspective. I will not be the only one so moved.”

“I pray you are right,” he says. “I hope to convince my father to loosen his anger’s tight cords.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

“No.”

“And I know you haven’t spoke with Gil-Galad, because he is always asking after you. He is desperate to see you.”

“I know,” he says. “I just don’t know what I ought to say to him.”

“I will go with you to one of his dinners, if you like,” she says. “We’ve become good friends, since my time here.”

“I’d like that,” he says. How often had he wanted to tell Gil-Galad something amusing or wonderful about his life, over the past millennia? At least if he brings Celebrían with him, he can rely on her to ease painful silences. She is warm beside him, and her bare legs are tangled around his own, and he wants her, suddenly, like a starving man wants food. But he is comfortable with her, and he is weary, and he fears shattering this new concord between them, so he only kisses her cheek, and tries to force himself to stop his mind’s ceaseless questioning, and slip into his dreams.

* * *

He summons Glorfindel to him, and asks him to arrange a meeting with King Gil-Galad, and the elf obliges with a smile that is almost broad enough to be considered impertinent. Next, he sends down to Nerdanel's house for his robes and books and other worldly goods. It is easier to stay at Court proper, rather than riding through the crowded city streets whenever he requires a different book. He finds himself smiling as he gives these orders, and when Celebrían dresses him for their dinner with Gil-Galad, he does not feel any fear at all, but only a slight and unexpected excitement. The touch of her lips against his own is like the brush of lightning against the ground.

Gil-Galad has his own house in the city, so they ride two of Nerdanel's horses to his dwelling place, and are welcomed by faces Elrond had, previously, buried. He greets the old commander of Gil-Galad's army with a broad smile, and embraces a page who perished from a poisoned arrow, and he presses his lips to the head of a girl whose child stopped up her womb, and caused her to die in agony.

Gil-Galad himself is dressed casually, in an effort to avoid the heat of high summer. He kisses Elrond on his cheeks, and calls him Cousin, and embraces Celebrían with easy familiarity such as they did not possess in the old world.

"I'm so glad to see you," Gil-Galad says. "They sang songs of your deeds, and for many years after my reimbodiment, I hung around the quays like a doddering old drunkard, seeking out any scrap of information about your life. Two sons and a daughter, you are blessed indeed! And married to Celebrían, I laughed about that, I predicted it, I had a wager."

"And he collected it too," the old commander says with a laugh. "Not even death could stop the King's insatiable desire to be right." Elrond finds himself laughing, and Celebrían laughs, and he embraces his old lord with fervor.

"Gil-Galad," he says. "By the Valar, it's a pleasure to behold you, your grace." The King waves away the title.

"None of that now, your oaths to me ended in my death, as you well know, and I don't seek for you to swear new ones. We're to be friends at last, Elrond, and I want to hear everything about your life in Middle Earth. Celebrían's told me much already, but I want to hear how you drained the swamps around your city, although I hear you allowed them to lapse back into swampland later, and I want to hear about your children, and about your expansions, and everything."

"Over dinner, my lords," Celebrían says. "I've heard both of you blather often enough to know I listen best with wine and meat and music. Come, Gil-Galad, let's see what you've decided to serve. Hopefully not rotten partridge again-"

"By the Valar, woman, it happened once, and I apologized profusely."

"He tried to poison me!" Celebrían exclaims with a laugh, and Elrond cannot contain his own laugh at the king's face.

"Unacceptable," he says, and Gil-Galad shakes his head, his whole body shaking in laughter. Elrond takes Celebrían's hand in his, and Gil-Galad conducts them into his ornate dining hall, talking about architecture. The memory of his king's mangled body on the battlefield seems somehow dim and unreal.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all my dear readers and commenters, you guys are truly amazing, and you make me feel very happy. :) 
> 
> Also, I tried my hardest to add cirth to this chapter, but I wasn't able to find a workable font, so if any of you know of a good place to find cirth that can be included in written text, I would really appreciate that information!

Gil-Galad sits as he was wont to before his death, with his legs splayed out in front of him, a goblet of wine in his hands, his circlet cast aside. His dark hair gleams in the firelight, and his body, entirely scarless, drapes across his furniture like a fine tapestry would. The eyes, however, are still Gil-Galad’s eyes, bright and quick and clear-seeing, although they are somewhat more prone to merriment.

Elrond sits across from the king, playing at dice. Celebrían rests her head on his chest, her legs stretched out on the long settee, and he strokes her hair as he considers his next move, and how many dice he wishes to wager. Her hair falls through his hands like water, and she occasionally shifts when his touch sends shivers down her scalp. He can feel the beating of her heart, and it is only slightly quicker than his own.

“Do you think the trial will be completed by the time we recess for winter?” The king asks.

“Valar, I hope so,” Celebrían responds. “I want to go home to my house and manage my affairs without worrying about death sentences.”

“What do you think?” Elrond asks the king. He sighs heavily.

“Even if the testimonies are all given, I think it will take a while to come to any kind of accord. I’m conflicted myself, Elrond. Certainly I don’t want any more elves to die, and I want to support you, but by the Valar, the man’s a murderer. I saw what he did to Arvenien, I took in her refugees. Valar, Elrond, I saw dead children, dead women. I saw a woman stabbed through her pregnant belly, I saw such horrors as orcs are like to commit.”

“Really?” His wife asks. Her voice is droll, but there is ice hidden in it. “Let’s not exaggerate, Gil-Galad.”

“I meant no disrespect, my lady,” the king says. “I apologize, but I too suffered under orcs. I perished by them. And I say I saw such cruelty in Sirion that I even now shudder to recall it. I grant that Maglor was decent to your husband, and that he loved his people, but he is a murderer, and many of the elves here are ones he slew. Do they not deserve justice more than he deserves mercy?”

“Gil-Galad,” Elrond says. “He has suffered so much. He has been alone for thousands of years, he-“

“Elrond,” Gil-Galad says. “My friend, I have no desire to litigate this case right now. I am simply offering you a perspective that you may not have considered.”

“My thanks,” Elrond says, but his ease is all but vanished. “Certainly your wish to slay a wounded man in order to comfort the living is a perspective that I have not considered.”

“Elrond,” Celebrían murmurs. “My love, perhaps we should talk of happier things.”

“I’m sorry,” Gil-Galad says. He toys with the dice in his hands, and flicks them onto the table. They land on a certh signifying a cast spear, and the certh which represents the slack string of fate in the world’s tapestry. He interprets them silently, the spear is an omen of strength, but also of wounding, the slack string suggests multiple probabilities but an unavoidable eventuality, and he sets the last of the dice down, then flips it over, without looking. “Fuck,” he says, staring at the symbol, which is the dumb ox, mute and useless.

“You should know better than to play with Elrond, Gil-Galad,” Celebrían says. “He has visions, so he always knows how the dice will turn.”

“I’m simply a good gambler,” he says. “But in this instance, Gil-Galad, I’m afraid I might lose.” He sets his three dice down in quick succession, the mute ox, the small house, the river’s wide mouth opening into the sea. “And I’m right,” he says.

“That’s a bad hand,” Gil-Galad says. “Your fortune will improve.”

“I hope so,” he says. Celebrían kisses his cheek, her face once again lit by a smile.

“Good thing you didn’t wager anything.”

“Games aren’t worth playing unless you stand to lose,” Gil-Galad says. “But as it happens, I have something we can all relish: fine spirits.” He draws a crystal decanter from its spot on his mantle, and pours them each a generous serving. “It’s a gift from your mother,” he says to Elrond. It’s truly an excellent liquor, Elrond reflects, savoring its subtle flavors and rich texture. He thinks how sweet its remnants will taste on Celebrían’s tongue, and he observes, in his detached Healer’s voice, that this thought brings with it no stab of guilt, or at least, only a small one.

“Perhaps I should visit her, just to have my own supply,” he says. Celebrían shushes him, but he can tell she is laughing beneath her sternness.

“Not a bad idea,” Gil-Galad says. “You could send a few bottles to your former liege lord, for old time’s sake.”

“No more taxes, Ereinion,” Elrond says. “Freedom from them was the only good thing about your death.” He meant the comment as a joke, but although Celebrían smiles, it is more from sadness, and Gil-Galad sips his liquor.

“Did you find my body?” He asks. “I heard you buried me, but-“

“I looked for you, my friend, in every crevasse and under every rock in that damned country. But I could not even find your helm or shield, though I did find your sword. We buried your standard, and your armband, and your crown.”

“That’s a pity,” Gil-Galad says. “I liked that crown.” Again the joke falls flat, because Elrond remembers the day of the funeral, in the bright sunlight of Imladris, after the War.

He had taken Gil-Galad’s Ring, a gift to him after he had broken the First Siege of Imladris and shattered the Enemy’s forces on the anvil of his might, a gift signifying his vice-regency and near equality, from its place of safekeeping in his city, and because the Enemy was defeated, and because his people were weakened, and because Galadriel and Círdan had both put on their own, he had slid it over his finger.

He can still feel the conflagration of agony. Once, he and Elros had ridden out into the wilderness, wearing only light armor, but by an unfortunate chance they had come upon a mother bear and her cub, and Elrond’s horse had reared in terror at the beast, and he himself had been so startled that he had not kept his seat, but has instead tumbled headlong to the ground, right in front of the bear. He scrambled backwards, his lungs screaming from the pain of the breath knocked out of them, trying to force himself to calm down and get air into his body. The bear raised up her claw, slowly, it seemed to Elrond, and had batted his side with it. At first the pain was like nailpricks in skin, but by the time he hit the ground, it felt like his body was virgin forest devastated by a conflagration, the inmost parts of him bared to the touch of mountain air on his wounds. His lungs wailed for air to enter them, and he felt, rather dimly, the awful crunch of a snapped rib moving around in his chest. He expected the bear to return to him, but it did not come, and he felt the blood bubbling in his wounds, and he was suddenly very afraid. Where was Elros? Would he lie here, dying, alone? Had the bear slain his brother? He shut his eyes against the brightness of the sun.

He opened them to find his brother singing a song of Healing, and Elrond jerked at the sensation of the strands of life in his body reigniting.

“Stop!” He begged, but the words were silent. He reached for his brother’s mind, desperate. “Elros, Elros, Elros, my rib must be set,” and he heard the song falter.

“Elrond,” he said, gently. “Valar, you’re awake.”

“Rib,” he gasped out. “Broken rib, you have to set it.” His brother eased him onto his side, and Elrond tried not to cry out, so as not to frighten him, and found the mangled rib, and aligned the broken ends. The pain was so great that Elrond felt he was being snapped open like a pea-pod in a farmer’s hand, and it was this pain that he felt when he first put on Gil-Galad’s Ring.

It had a Will of its own, a drive and desire in tandem with its power, it had absorbed some of the spirit of its creator. The Ring forced its way into every part of Elrond’s mind, sussing our weaknesses, testing strengths, melding itself to him. Gil-Galad has never dared to put it on, because the Enemy might sense his thoughts, but Elrond knew as soon as he slid it over his finger that He had never touched it. The Ring burned with clear fire, it purified, it revealed. He collapsed to the floor from the agony of his torn-open mind, he felt himself hanging in tatters in the wind. Glorfindel later told him he stayed curled up around the Ring for close to a week, unmoving and silent, before he at last found the source of its power and bound its will to his, and drew strength from it, and stood.

After that, he ate a small meal, and slept, and began preparations.

He held funeral games for Gil-Galad and the other fallen heroes. He housed half the elven army in the lands surrounding his city, and he brought Celebrían with him to overlook the encampment and ensure that tents were properly laid out. They rode through rows and rows of gleaming fabric and bright standards and flashing armor and high-stepping horses, and everywhere he went, lords bowed before him, and some of the lesser soldiers even pressed their faces to the ground. He heard whispers that they wanted him to claim the title of High King.

“Observe how these tents are erected in a circular pattern around the small spring,” he said to the girl at his shoulder. Her gaze followed his finger, and she nodded at his words. “In that manner, every elf is guaranteed equal access to clean water.”

“A wise system,” she agreed.

“I’ve a mind to ride out to the plains and observe the preparations for the funeral games,” he said.

“Alright,” she said. They wheeled their horses around and rode eastward a short while, to the grand pavilion currently being built with fresh-hewn wood. The sound of work and labor filled the air, and strains of music ascended skyward, and the sun beat down on his back pleasantly. He wore a sword at his hip, of course, but he rode without armor for the first time in centuries, and his horse noticed the changed weight and pranced beneath him. He felt Celebrían’s eyes on him. If he bent only a little of the Ring’s power to his desire, he could have sussed out the secrets lingering in her mind, but to do so seemed invasive, and besides, there was work to be done.

They rode around the structure, and then rode down the lists where the tournament would occur, charging at each other in jest, and then they inspected the course for the footraces, and then the range for archery, and finally the rings for combat, both armed and unarmed.

“It progresses perfectly,” he said. They were walking their horses down to the river to see its depth and ensure that there would be enough water to service several thousand mounts.

“It’s a wonder,” she said. “I just wish we could be doing this from joy instead of sorrow.”

“As do I,” he said. “But this funeral will honor Gil-Galad and Oropher and Amdir and the others who fell, and it will bring our discordant, fractious people into peace. After all is completed, each elf can return to their own dwelling, satisfied that their duty is completed.” He looked at her, walking beside him. Her mount tried to crop a sprig of green grass, and she forced its head up to her shoulder. The horse whickered, and snuffled at her loose hair, and right at that moment a bolt of sunlight shot through the trees and illuminated her, so that she seemed something divine, like Melian must have appeared to Thingol when he first encountered her wandering through Beleriand.

“What are you thinking, my lord?” She asked.

“I’m thinking,” he paused, looking for words that would be appropriate, unassuming, but none came. “I’m thinking you’re beautiful, standing in the sunlight of peace after the dark storm of war. And I’m thinking I will miss you greatly, if you decide to return to your people.”

“Ask me to stay then,” she said. “And not as your student. I’ve learned much from you, but I’ve a desire to put my work into practice.”

“Stay,” he said. “Stay, and I’ll make you a member of my Council.”

“I could have my own kingdom,” she said. “My mother could give me one.”

“Stay,” he said. “Remain here, in Imladris, and I will make you its lady.”

“You would step down?” She asked. Her voice was feather-soft.

“No,” he said. “No, I would not.”

“Then what are you offering?” She asked. He thought of her practicing her speeches in his courtyard, and overseeing the breeding of his horses, and sponging wounds when the shortage of healers demanded all give what aid they could. He thought of her sweet voice repeating words in the alien tongues he taught her, and her strong-lunged songs drowning out the fear in his heart during cold winters, and he thought of her as he had seen her, weeping beneath a tree in his garden. He had gone to her, and comforted her, and she had buried her head in his shoulder and begged him to please, please, please say something, please offer some hope. He had turned away from this request, terrified of his visions, but the war was over, and evil was vanquished.

“Be my lady,” he said, softly. “Be my wife.”

“Do you mean it?” she asked. “You want to marry me?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “I’ve wanted to for so long, but because of the war I did not dare-“

“Oh Elrond,” she said. “I loved you almost from the start, but I thought you thought me a child, and I thought myself a child for wanting someone so lauded, a hero of our ancient age, the vice-regent to the king. And when I began to understand that you did love me, it was too late for hope, because war was as certain as sunrise, and I knew you would be in the front lines, and I would have to stay behind.”

“Now we can walk side-by-side,” he said. They came upon the river rushing westward to the sea, pooling in the shallow curves of the bank, touched by tree roots and a fish jumped up out of the water, a salmon, swimming up to its spawning ground. The sign was auspicious.

“And I will stay with you,” she said. “Until this river runs out of water, and drains itself entirely into the ocean.”

So she had stood beside him when he judged the various contests of the funeral games. They watched the fleetest of the elves speed across the wide meadow, they watched horse-racing and acrobatics, they watched the marvelous archery contest, when the new king of the Sindar, Thranduil, son of Oropher, shot down a white dove against a white sky with a golden arrow. He lauded Glorfindel as the victor of armed combat, and gave him a dozen of the king’s horses as reward, and the captain of his household bowed to him. Celebrían praised the victor of chariot races, a boy without a noble house, who nevertheless distinguished himself from the more experienced nobles by driving his chariot in a daring manner. Celebrían offered him a place in their Household, and he bowed low to them.

Elrond lit the funeral pyres of the heroes, none of which bore their actual bodies, and they heard the laments sung for the fallen, and he himself sang a song he had composed in honor of his perished king, and the mourning cries rose up to the heavens, and Elrond saw the bright star of his father, motionless, standing high above his head.

“Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars, world-watcher in heaven, new hope of men,” he murmured, but he received no response.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Elrond sits beside Maglor as his father, glowing from the light of the Silmaril, bows his head to the King, and to the Council.

“You have heard the moving testimony of Elrond of Imladris,” Eärendil says. “Unless you have a stony heart, you will mourn for the sorry figure of Maglor Fëanorion. I myself feel pity for him welling up in my heart. Certainly I ache for what he suffered, and for the evils his oath wrought in his life and in the world, but in Valinor, we cannot decide our actions based on mere sentiment. As the Council of the Eldar, you are tasked with ensuring obedience to our laws, and when they are ignored, it is your duty to punish the offender. I myself faced a trial when, without permission, I came to this blessed shore in search of the Valar’s aid. King Turgon, you were kept for many years in the Halls of Mandos, for crossing eastward into Middle Earth in defiance of Ban of the Valar. There is no room in the law for laxity or indulgence. If your sons broke their oaths to you as their liege-lord, you would punish them just as you would a commoner. The law ensures our society endures. Elrond of Imladris is a man with a generous heart, but he should know better than to argue for Maglor’s release without punishment. Maglor’s sufferings in Middle Earth were dire, I will acknowledge, but there are some who suffered much more, and they were blameless in their agony. Suffering cannot purge all sins, or even most of them. To permit Maglor freedom would be to permit our worst enemy, except for the Shadow and the Darkness themselves, to wander in our midst. You listened while Elrond related the sorry details of the Kinslayer’s life, now I ask you to listen to the stories of those he slaughtered.”

“You won’t win this, Elrond,” Maglor murmurs. Although Elrond has healed his shoulder, he still clutches it as though it pains him, and Elrond once again finds himself wondering how long it had been left dislocated.

“I have to,” he says. “I won’t see another elf perish.”

“Death might be merciful,” Maglor says. “I could not kill myself in the old world, no matter how I tried. My nooses broke, and when I cast myself from cliff-faces, I only injured myself so terribly that I prayed to die, when I starved myself, my body only wasted away, but my spirit remained. Death is better than a life that is a prison.” Elrond thinks of his wife, who suffered what no elf should have been able to endure, and chose to live in spite of it, and bites his tongue. “I will demand to speak, when Eärendil’s testimony is complete,” Maglor says. “I love you still, Elrond, but I will not let you hold me here. The touch of your father’s sword on my neck will be sweeter than my wife’s kiss.”

“Valar and Morgoth, Maglor,” he whispers, but Eärendil has begun, half-singing, to recount the slaughter at Alqualondë, and list the many dead, and Elrond listens with the feeling of a sunken stone striking the bed of his heart. He sees the images as Eärendil tells of them, children left bereft of mothers, children slaughtered, and before his testimony is halfway finished, the room is filled with the sound of weeping, and Elrond can scarcely hear his father’s voice above the mourning elves. Even his wife brushes aside a tear, even Nerdanel, stern and cool and impassive as she is, sobs. The common people lament, and when Eärendil finishes his song, first one, then another, then the whole crowd stands up and cries for vengeance.

“Ulmo,” Elrond prays. “If you are here, help me. I have spun my web of words, but my father has torn to tatters all the pity and sorrow I wove into my speech.” But no answer comes to him, so he rises, and the common people boo him. He may as well be their murderer.

“Listen to yourselves, you bloodthirsty brutes,” he says. His voice is dark and resonant, and it cuts through the noise like a sword through flesh. “You spend your lives in a world without sorrows, but you crave bloodshed just as much as a lord of war. More so, perhaps, since you don’t know what is required to take a life, even an orc’s life, especially an elf’s. I ask you, should we slaughter every elf who slays another?”

“Yes!” A man’s voice cries out, and Elrond turns to him.

“I’ve killed elves,” he says. “I’ve killed so many I’ve lost count. I was the Chief Executioner for a time to the High King Gil-Galad, and then I was Lord of my own city, and I myself administered justice. Do I deserve to perish?”

“They weren’t innocent!” The man snaps. “This man killed women, he killed children, he killed the unarmed and the feeble!”

“And do you think he is the only elf to ever kill a child?” Elrond asks. There is utter silence at his question. “You seem young, so I shall forgive you your ignorance of our history, but I assure you that many of the lords who sit in judgement are guilty of that sin, whether by necessity or no.”

“You speak of things best left undisclosed,” Finarfin says. Elrond dips his head.

“To avenge the murder of elves, you would murder an elf. Will his blood cause the shed blood of his victims to be renewed? Will wounds to his body heal the wounds he dealt? Justice is admirable, vengeance is not, and there is nothing just or admirable in beheading an old cripple who has been without companionship for many thousands of years.”

But Elrond knows when a crowd hears him, and when they hear only the desires of the flesh. His speech is not lauded, and his words hang limp and useless in the air. He sees that he is doomed to lose, and he sees that his father is destined to be Maglor’s executioner, and he sees that he is doomed to fail Ulmo’s simple task.

He thinks on his words to Celebrían, and when the recess for the day is officially announced, he abandons Maglor to the ministrations of his guards, and he hurried after Eärendil. He waits, pretending to be occupied, while Eärendil discusses his preparations for tomorrow with one of his assistants, and when at last his father dismisses the girl with a final order to consider the dead of the Helcaraxë, Elrond steps from his place in the shadows.

“Lord Eärendil,” he says. Should he call him Father? Is he permitted to do so? Does he have any desire to?

“Lord Elrond,” his father says. His voice is even, measured. “I thought you might come. Would you walk with me? I must embark upon my ship, as it is almost evenfall.”

“If it is no burden, my lord, I would appreciate the opportunity to talk away from Court.”

“Certainly,” Eärendil says. “Come with me.” His father leads him from Finarfin’s palace, out into the streets. Elrond has to jostle elves from his path, sometimes even while riding, they part for Eärendil, and avert their eyes. Elrond does not know how to begin his request, he does not have the words to ask what he most ardently desires. They move swiftly through the city, down to the less populated quarters, and when they are fully outside its walls, Eärendil turns to him. “You know your case is lost,” he says. “You know now that the people are with me, and the majority of the Council too.”

“Yes,” Elrond says. He does not like having his intentions guessed, much less guessed correctly, but his father is the Far-Seer, the Bright One, and it is said that he understands the minds of all elves.

“Was he that good a father to you?” Eärendil asks. His words are contemplative, musing.

“He did not abandon me for the Sea.” Eärendil flinches, and Elrond wishes his radiance were somewhat less intense, so that he could tell whether it is guilt or fury that twists across the man’s countenance. He decides to push further, to see if he can unsettle the lord, to see if he can learn anything about him. “My mother abandoned us for the Jewel,” Elrond says. “She took it with her when she jumped from the window, instead of us. Maglor and Maedhros never abandoned us, they never left us to defend ourselves, Maedhros was wounded defending me, and when Elros was still little, Maglor took his wasting illness upon himself, rather than let him suffer.”

“I’m sorry,” his father says. “I’m sorry you were abandoned. If I could redo anything in my life, I would take you and your brother with me on my voyages. I would not forsake you. Elrond, I did love you, I gave you a father-name-“

“I know,” Elrond says. “I remember everything, since I first began to wear my Ring. I know what you named me, and I choose the name given me by the Kinslayers.”

“I cannot fault you for despising me,” Eärendil says. “And I am sorry that our first meeting in Valinor is as opponents. It is not my wish to hurt you, Elrond. I saw how much you suffered, I saw your tragedies, and believe me when I say I wept for them. When I saw what was done to your wife-“

“What happened to my wife is not your concern,” Elrond says. “And I do not wish to speak of her agonies with you.” Eärendil dips his head. His hair is long and blond, and it falls into his green eyes. Elrond thinks that he looks nothing like his father, that none of his children look anything like him. He looks more similar to Maglor than to Eärendil.

The hovering Vingilot appears when they round the corner to the quay. It is a massive ship, and it soars high in the air, tethered by only a single golden thread. Elrond has seen the ship before, of course, at the end of the War of Jewels when his father slew Ancalagon the Black, but in the last rays of sunlight it seems different. The words Elrond intends to say fall away from his lips, as he stares at the one ship that can travel from Valinor to the old world.

“Would you like to come with?” Eärendil asks. “I know you have more to say.”

“Is it allowed?” Elrond asks. Once he had been rescued by Manwë’s great eagles, and he had held out his arms and pretended they had feathers, and he had wanted to float forever in the sky.

“All things are permitted, Elrond,” Eärendil says. “You know this.” Elrond thinks of his daughter, of his sons, of Celeborn and Círdan, of Estel himself, now Tar-Elessar, of the little Shire that he had intended to visit, after he briefly encounter Bilbo Baggins, and of the lands east of Mordor, which remain to him a mystery.

“I would dearly love to come,” he says. He sounds close to begging, and a Lord does not ever beg, but in that moment he wants nothing more than to clamber up the rope and into the ship.

“A word of warning,” Eärendil says. “It is easy enough to sail beyond the silver shore, but the return is always fraught with difficulties, but I will be with you, and I will guide us safely between Being and Void.”

“Yes, my lord,” Elrond says. Eärendil touches the golden rope, and a ladder woven of golden rope slithers down from the deck. He gestures for Elrond to proceed, and, with some slight difficulty in the evening winds, Elrond climbs up and up, into the great ship. The light of the Silmaril on the mast is blinding.

He can overlook the city from his place at Viniglot’s railing, and as the lights begin to brighten for the evening, Eärendil hoists himself into the ship and Elrond helps him drag up the anchor. It is extraordinarily light, and he is surprised to discover that there is no weight holding the ship in place. Eärendil smiles as the ship begins to rise into the air, ascending rapidly as a hawk stoops, and between the time when Elrond closes his eyes and the time when he opens them, they move from air to nothingness, and when he looks down, he can see the outline of the entire continent of Aman, twice as large as the lands of the old world, receding far into the distance. He finds himself unable to breathe. He sees tropical forests and dense jungles and in the distance a gleaming white desert, he sees snow-mountains and the silver scars of rivers, land follows land, islands break away and form archipelagos, some inhabited, others awaiting settlement.

“It’s so vast,” he breathes. If Elladan and Elrohir ever do decide to journey westward, they will wish to map the strangeness of the world.

And then Eärendil turns the ship, though without touching a rudder or wheel, and Elrond looks down to see a new land, green and verdant, haunted on the western horizon by the black mountains of Mordor. He and Elros had planned to journey together into this place, but there had never been time enough.

When they cross from sea to shore, Elrond hears a strange dirge begin, and he looks to his father as a prayer rises to them, repeated from many lips. “Send home our men, far-distant and laboring lost in western wildernesses,” he hears. “Oh Star of Guidance, send them home.”

“The men of Far Harad,” he murmurs. Painted men, with large elephants and fierce spears and curved swords that slashed open necks, and women and children and households awaiting their return. “But they were allied with the Enemy, why do they honor you?”

“I am Hope,” his father says. “Even though they know nothing of the Valar and the One, they know of me. I belong to them as much as I do to the men of Westernesse, or to the elves.”

“But what hope is there?” Elrond asks. “The men were slaughtered, all of them, in battle.”

“Not all,” Eärendil says. “Even now a small band of them fights to cross unknown lands far to the north, but step by step they draw near to home, and their wives, and their babes now much older than they were at first, and they follow the brightness of the Silmaril east and south.”

They cross the lands swiftly, then sail over the desolation of Mordor. Elrond sees, to his surprise, that new vegetation is growing by the riverbanks, and the encircling fence of the Enemy’s mountains has largely crumbled to dust.

“In ten generations, or twenty,” his father says. “This land will not seem much different at all from Gondor.” Elrond thinks that he can almost believe this. The world will be so different without the Shadow, or even the threat of the Shadow. In ten generations, or twenty, what memory of the elves will remain? Books do not last forever, buildings crumble, even the best swords rust, and memories are fickle. Will his descendants know they share blood with him? Will they know of him? Will they hear tales of Arwen and King Elessar and laugh at their impossibility?

Then they sail above Gondor itself. The white city is bright with lights, and the prayers of the inhabitants rise up as one, and a few voices speak in Sindarin. Elrond tries to discern his daughter’s voice, he hovers over the railing, he wants to cry out to her, to see her face, to see her child, or, perhaps now, her children, but he does not have Eärendil’s sight, so he can only watch as the city drifts eastward, and the open plains approach.

“Arwen,” he whispers, his own prayer. “Arwen, Arwen, may you be well, be happy.”

“You will not see her,” Eärendil says. “You chose to leave this world, and so you renounced your place within it.”

“I know,” Elrond says, but he watches the White City recede from his view, until all that remains of it is a bright jewel on the horizon. Then he stands beside his father, and watches in silence as the scarcely populated middle-lands roll on before them. Whispers of prayers rise up like the smoke of incense. “I wanted to thank you,” he says. The words stick in his throat, but he forces them out anyway. “I wanted to thank you for renouncing your right to respond yesterday, and allowing me to speak with Celebrían when she wept.”

“She is very dear to me,” his father says. “She recounted many tales of your life and hers in the old world to myself and Elwing. I have no wish to see her suffer.”

“Nor I,” Elrond says. They come to the first of the Misty Mountains, which crawl like a spine across the land of Middle Earth. It is different, looking upon his world from above, and he sees the place where Rivendell once was. No lights gleam in the city, no hymns rise in hope, the white of the buildings is not distinguishable from the white of the mountains. “My labors bore fruit,” he says. “But that fruit withered on the vine. Look now at my refuge and my stronghold, my place of hope and peace. My city is a rock hollow, a cave in a cleft, a place without life or light.”

“Yes,” Eärendil says. “There are none to live there now, but this world was never ours, not truly, Elrond. This land cannot hold our kind, any more than cupped hands can contain water. You will found another city, larger and brighter and merrier than your first, and those you called lord will name you king, and you will enjoy the products of your labors for all your life, and when the end of the world comes and Melkor rises in might from his place in the Void, and summons all his enemies to him, you will rise to meet him, and beside you, your sons, and their sons.” His words have the ring of prophecy, the sound of truth, and Elrond sags against the railing of the ship, his heart prepared to stop beating from the blessed knowledge that his sons will choose immortal life. “And who knows what may happen in the new world made from the Second Music, following that victory?” Eärendil asks. “Perhaps the pain and sorrow that you now suffer will be washed away.”

“May it be,” Elrond says. For the briefest of moments, he imagines encountering Elros again, he imagines embracing Arwen again, he dreams of a world of men without death, when all evil is turned at last towards good.

“But you did not come to me to hear my prophecies,” Eärendil says. “So ask me what you will.”

“I ask you, Lord Eärendil, as a man of your blood, as your servant, to refrain from asking the Council of the Eldar for Maglor’s death.”

“What would you have happen instead?” Eärendil asks.

They are passing westward, over what must be the Shirelands, but instead of sailing out to sea, they take a turn downwards, into a chasm, and Elrond finds they are on a narrow path between bright light and thick darkness.

The face of Melkor rears up against the thick black smoke, and Elrond stumbles in horror, he has no sword, he has nothing- but Melkor is rebuffed by the mist, and and he throws himself again, and again, and again.

“He cannot sense us,” Eärendil says. “He is like a blinded lion pacing in his cage. He is furious and wrath-filled, but he is trapped, and will remain so until the End of Days.” Elrond watches the fury and despair on the Vala’s face, once beautiful, once terrible, but now only pitiable. Was this the Enemy he thought would surely slaughter him? “What would you have done with Maglor?”

He thinks of Maglor’s words, death is better than a life that is a prison.

“Give him to me as a thrall,” he says. “Have him swear new oaths by the Valar and the One to do only good instead of evil.”

“Oaths can be broken, as he has proven,” Eärendil says. ”If he is executed, we will be certain that he does no evil.”

“Do you truly think he will ravage Alqualondë again?” Elrond asks. His father looks out into the Void, to the place where Elrond knows the Eternal Flame burns.

“I know he won’t,” Eärendil says. “But once is enough, don’t you think?”

“The way of mercy is more arduous than that of vengeance,” Elrond says. “But it leads to a much better world.”

“Kinsman,” Eärendil says. “I saw your deeds from afar. All would name you just, but there are not many who would call you merciful.”

“I did not have that luxury in war,” Elrond says. “But do we not live in peace? Can we truly not afford an act of mercy to a pitiful old man?” Eärendil turns away from him, facing westward, where a silver shore appears, and with it, sunlight.

“I will consider your words,” he says, and the ship sinks lower, into its harbor. Already the night feels strange and distant to Elrond, like a dream’s memory. Had he truly seen Mordor overgrown with green thickets, and the glowing city of Gondor, and Imladris all abandoned? He climbs down from the boat to the dock in a daze, and Eärendil’s hand on his shoulder steadies him.


	9. Chapter 9

Elrond walks through the streets of Tirion half-dazzled by the afterimage of the Silmaril burned into his eyes, and he feels the gaze of the city on his back as he passes through the crowds. They part for him as for his father, and they are careful to avoid his gaze. It is like he is a stormcloud, ill-omened and terrible. Does Eärendil have companions in Valinor? Does he have a Household? Elrond cannot imagine being at ease with him, when he glows constantly in the Silmaril’s light, and makes a trip across the entirety of the world every evening. The gems are uncanny and dangerous, and they bestow beauty and terror on those who wear them.

Elrond is not even greeted until he hears a soft, musical voice state his name.

“Lord Elrond of Imladris,” Ecthelion says. He is perched on a low wall outside Turgon’s house, and he jumps down, lithe as a panther, and falls in beside Elrond.

“Lord of the Fountain,” Elrond says. “It is a pleasure.”

“More for me, my lord,” the elf says. He is dark-haired and tall, as tall as Elrond himself, and only slightly shorter than Glorfindel, and he wears a sword at his side, his scabbard etched with his sign of a great fountain. “May I walk with you to Court?”

“Please,” Elrond says. “I would be honored.”

“Your argument for Maglor is compelling,” Ecthelion says. “I crossed the Helcaraxë, but by the Valar, I think I could forgive him his part in that.”

“I’m pleased you can find mercy in your heart, Lord of the Fountain,” Elrond says.

“Ecthelion, please,” the Lord says. “You shame me when you use my title, you being so great a lord.”

“I learned songs of your valiant deeds in my youth,” Elrond says. “It is I who should be ashamed.”

“Glorfindel told me you offered me a place within your household.”

“Such as I have, I have offered,” Elrond says.

“You are aware that what I feel for Glorfindel, and he for me, surpasses the bonds of friendship and liege-loyalty, though earlier in our lives we shared both?”

“I’ve gathered,” Elrond says. Ecthelion turns a sharp-eyed gaze on him, and seems to peer past the residue of the Silmaril, judging, probing. “The Customs were different in the old world,” Elrond says. “Life was too close to death to worry about attachments. Elves took love where and how it was offered, and I see no reason why, given that it is not forbidden, your love should not be permitted. Everything is allowed here.”

“The injunction to bear children is very strong, and very old,” Ecthelion says. “And many argue that the Law forbids any union that cannot result in a babe.”

“My wife is barren, Lord Ecthelion,” Elrond says. It feels strange, saying it aloud. He has not even told Glorfindel this, he has not told his children. “She was terribly wounded by the orcs, and to heal her, I had to cause her womb to never again conceive.”

“I mourn for that, Lord,” Ecthelion murmurs. “And for the lady’s sufferings.”

“It is a tragedy,” Elrond says. “We always desired four children, we had hoped- but it is long past hoping now. Nevertheless, despite this, Lord Ecthelion, I assure you that my wife remains my wife, and I her husband. The same logic may be applied in your situation, I imagine. But what of Turgon? I do not imagine he will take kindly to me stealing away one of his closest companions, and I’ve no wish to quarrel with him.” Ecthelion bows his head.

“My oaths to the King were fulfilled when I perished, and I never swore new ones, but I have served him since we were both children in Aman, and he is like my own brother. It would pain me to leave his Household, but in Gondolin my union with Glorfindel was, while not punished, not legitimate, and King Turgon keeps the same Laws here as he did there. But I do not think he would be angry with me for following Glorfindel, or with you, his own great-grandson, for taking some of his followers. Most kings give their descendants vassals, so that they learn how to rule. I was not promised to Eärendil, mortal as he seemed to be, but I did serve the Princess Idril as her advisor, so I would have precedent for joining your Household, if you would have me.”

“Glorfindel is my dearest friend,” Elrond says. “And to that which he wills, I willingly give my consent. If Turgon’s mind can be turned to your wish, I will not begrudge Glorfindel entering into his former liege-lord’s service, but if you cannot change his Laws, and if you will it, I will welcome you into my Household.”

“My lord,” Ecthelion says. “I am liege-lord to well over a hundred warriors, and they have wives and children, and some hold allegiances of their own vassals, who maintain their own households. I have no doubt that some will choose to sunder their vows to me, but I have seen where you and the lady dwell, and it is not quite large enough to house us all, even if a decent majority of my people, even if most of them, choose Turgon.”

“What would you ask of me, Ecthelion?” He asks.

“I don’t ask, my lord; I offer. My people, and Glorfindel’s, for he still has many who name him lord, will fashion you a dwelling in the manner of Gondolin, a city built in rock by a swift river, with fields for grazing horses and rich farmland and hot springs for relaxation. We’ve done it before, in an age of war and uncertainty. We can do it now, in peace.”

“Last I spoke to Glorfindel, he seemed adamant that he would not pursue matters further.”

“He has told me that it must be my decision. I was reluctant to swear allegiance to another, for although I knew he admired you, I knew nothing of you. But I have heard your declarations of fealty in court, and your leal nature has made itself quite plain. Turgon was an excellent King to me, but it is my right to serve another, if I will, and if you are as dutiful to your vassals as you are to your foster-father, I can ask for no better lord. It would be my honor to serve you, my lord.”

“If Glorfindel wills it,” Elrond says. “I will take your oath, and the oaths of your followers. But in Imladris it was the custom for new subjects to swear fealty to myself and to Celebrían. Speak with my wife about your intentions, and if she acquiesces, inform Turgon. I would not have him think I have turned his Household against him.”

“Yes, my lord,” Ecthelion says, and he bows to him, a deep bow, the kind Elrond once gave Gil-Galad at formal ceremonies. The gesture draws him from his daze. Has he truly agreed to found another city? Has he gone mad? What all had he and Eärendil discussed as they sailed across the sky? And what will his wife say? He can imagine her flaming wrath when he informs her of this decision. Elrond, she’ll say, in her even, measured, furious voice. Did you rule without me for so long that you now find me extraneous? And does he even want to rule a city, and judge squabbles, and sit and pretend to be wise? Would it not, inevitably, seem only a pale memory of Imladris?

* * *

That evening, after the testimonies of those who suffered crossing the Helcaraxë, Elrond dreams of his first meeting with Gil-Galad.

He had been far north, on the island of Beleriand, in the glacier range of Hithlum, stationed as Commander of the northernmost post of the Fëanorian settlement, with Elros, the younger twin, although not by much, as his lieutenant. Since it was their first time leading soldiers, it was supposed to be easy. They had served under experienced warlords, and planned raids and retreats, and studied tactics endlessly, and Maglor and Maedhros would suggest difficult scenarios, and demand they think their way out of them.

“We’ll raise you like princes,” Maedhros often said. “You’ll have an education equal to our own, better than, even, since when we were children the idea of war seemed nigh impossible. By the time you attain majority, you’ll be more than capable of commanding our banners.” What he did not say was that they would be capable of serving the High King, if they wished. The idea was present though, a deep, yearning desire to see other elves, to hear their strange tongues, to taste life beyond Maedhros and Maglor’s stronghold and territories. It was rare for a visitor to happen upon their valley, and rarer still for them to be welcomed. Once, Maglor had spoken of visiting Galadriel, though he named her then Artanis, and Maedhros has raised his eyebrow and spoken a name in a strange tongue, which Elrond did not yet know, or else, which he had known, but had swiftly forgotten. _Celeborn_.

But when he was twenty, he was given command of the northernmost outpost, and told to manage its resources and its men, and discipline when discipline was demanded, and reward when rewards were due, and to ensure the northlands remained free from foul influences. He had seen orcs before, he had slain a few, enough to count on two hands, and three of those kills had been in pitched battle, and Maglor had composed a song about his fearsome sword, and sang it to the laughter and merriment of the halls, because it was a parody of the Old High Hymn to Tulke the Hunter.

So he rode out decked in Fëanorian colors, and proud of them too. Sometimes he whispered the words of the Oath to himself, and wondered whether it was possible to say it without meaning it, and still be bound to it. And sometimes he felt he truly did mean it when he said it, and he would imagine a burning lust for the Silmaril, like the strange impulses he felt when he looked upon the elf-maidens who came to visit with Maedhros and Maglor, and he would imagine going mad from the awfulness of his desire. But hunger would overcome him, or Maglor would ask him to assist with a healing, and the thought would fade.

The northlands were bitter cold, but that was designed to harden them to awful conditions in the field. The snow drove against them, blinding them, and at some points they had to dismount from their fine horses and clear a path through thick drifts. Since Elrond was Commander, it fell to him to break the trail, and he found himself too wearied to speak or even eat most nights. Elros talked with the soldiers, and played at dice with them, and pressed for answers to his innumerable questions about life beyond Beleriand, about mortals, about how the world was divided, and about the Enemy.

They arrived at the cusp of autumn, during a slight melting of snow, and to fanfare and trumpets, Elrond marched his host into the fort, and ceremonially received his office from the former Commander, who bowed low to him and called him my lord, and seemed to mean it too.

Elros too received the symbols of his office, a sharp dagger and a scroll containing the Law of the Fëanorians, and he bowed to Elrond, and then they went on a tour of the edifice, and learned its strengths and weaknesses, and a small feast was held with salmon and mutton and free-flowing wine. The old commander took Elrond aside and showed him his office and his reports, and instructed him in how to address his soldiers, and gave him a hand-drawn map, and kissed his hand, as though Elrond were a real lord, and not just a former prisoner.

“May the good things in this world bless you, lord,” he said. “I hope some day when you’re a king, you’ll look back on this moment and know I saw it in you.” King of what, Elrond wanted to ask. Instead he bowed to the commander, a low bow, one of respect for his rank and office and experience, and bade him a safe journey home, and asked him to send his regards to the Sons of Fëanor.

So Elrond had begun his lordship. He rose well before dawn, and dined with Elros, and discussed what the scouts had reported the previous day, and he laid out tasks and duties, and then he inspected the barracks and watched the men parade, and he gave orders about what preparations needed to be made, or what territories needed to be scoured.

Once, a scout reported a group of orcs, ten in total, and Elrond with burning jealousy ordered Elros to take a light contingent and extinguish them. He wanted battle-blood, but his duties constrained him.

He had not realized how much menial paperwork awaited one of high office. He wrote reports in the afternoon, summarizing yesterday afternoon and the present day’s morning. He was grateful that he had no cause to punish his soldiers.

Maglor had told him he was to punish when punishment was necessary, but the men under his hand were steady warriors, experienced and dutiful, more than willing to take orders from a green boy tasting true power for the first time. Elrond had, at first, credited his exemplary leadership with their compliance, but he thinks now that they abided with his uncertainty out of love for his foster fathers. He had no need to withdraw the fearsome whip from its resting place, and he was glad, because as a Healer-in-training, he would be responsible for ameliorating the damage that his own hands had wrought.

The winter slid by peacefully. He watched the stars wheel above him, he grew used to his duties, he began to enjoy them, and he ordered his men to venture further afield.

On the first day of spring, he sent them to overlook an old war-tower of Gondolin. There were twenty in that party, and one returned, babbling of an orc-army and immense numbers and certain death. He had a blackening wound, made from a kind of poison that is not easily removed, and Elrond knew his fate was certain death.

His men wanted a fight, battle-hardened as they were, but one of the older soldiers took him aside and called him a deferential word for a child, and told him that wisdom may sometimes lie in retreating.

Elrond ordered two scouts to report on the exact numbers of their foes. His garrison was one-third gone already, and the cook informed him that they had hardly any provisions. The party had intended to hunt game, and they were due a shipment of vegetables from Amon Ereb in a few days.

The scouts brought bad news, and he gave up all hope of fighting. There was no chance that they could withstand a siege. Orcs fear daylight, so come the dawn, his men packed their provisions, and mounted their horses, and rode out the gates.

There were orcs awaiting them, of course, but they were disorganized, and easy to cut through, because elves in those days did not often flee without a battle.

He hoped to swing northward as far as the foothills, then under their cover make their way south to Amon Ereb. He knew it was an extraordinary failure for a commander to lose his outpost, and he knew that the whip he feared to touch might well find its way to his back. He was no longer Maglor’s son alone, but a soldier who had failed in his duty. But he knew also that with one third of his garrison murdered, he had no chance of defeating the monsters, and his first priority was defense of the living, not initiating war.

The sound of pursuit came to them in the night, and Elrond did not allow himself to show fear, but he bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. They were headed in the wrong direction, a perilous choice, and they had no means of overcoming the mass of orcs that wailed for their blood.

They did not rest that night, but pushed onwards, riding for the mountains, but shortly after dawn they came to an ice-ford, and Elrond realized with a shock of deep fear that he had been taking the men by a direct route, and he had not checked a map. It was swift-flowing and thick already with the springmelt, and chunks of ice calved from glaciers sped by, borne south and westward by the current.

“A valuable lesson, my lord,” said the old soldier at his side.

“You knew,” Elrond gasped. He wanted to shout his fury, his frustration at himself, at the man. “You knew and you said nothing!”

“As sworn to Lords Maedhros and Maglor,” the man responded. “They made me promise not to ever question a choice you made. I can advise you beforehand, but I am not to discourage your course of action. You’ve learned your lesson now: know the terrain. What are your options?”

“Find a better place to ford,” Elrond says. “Retrace our steps, else cross here. What should I do?”

“You can’t doubt yourself, Lord. You made an ill choice before, but you’ve time to correct it. There are orcs to the south of us, an army of them. This river, as you know, has no easy place to ford with the spring melt upon us.”

“So we cross here,” Elrond said. “What of the horses?”

“You’re the lord.”

“We can’t travel without them,” he said. The man nods his head. “So perhaps we can construct a raft, and ferry them, one by one. That way our provisions can remain dry. Orcs dislike running water, so we can afford the extra time it would take.

“A wise course of action. Where do we go once we’ve crossed the river?” Elrond withdrew his map, and observed the landmarks. After the fall of Gondolin, after the wastes of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the North was pitiable and profitless, but-

“Gil-Galad has an outpost, a day’s walk from here. We will be freezing cold, we will suffer, but we are not mortals, we can bear the worst of it. We can ask for aid there.”

“Gil-Galad is no friend to the Fëanorians,” the soldier warned, and Elrond nodded.

“I know, but we have little choice in the matter. The orcs are certain to catch us sooner or later. Better we yoke our forces with Gil-Galad’s than suffer defeat. If their outpost is composed of numbers similar to ours, they too will fall without our combined strength. If Gil-Galad’s Commander will not have us, if he turns us away, we will be well positioned to flee into the mountains, and at the very least the laws of hospitality prevent him from sending us to die, so he will be forced to let us dry our clothes, and feed us for a night.”

“Lord,” the soldier said, very softly. “The last time Gil-Galad engaged with the us, he sent warships against us.”

“He did,” Elrond responded. “But that was over the slaughter at Sirion. I was Eärendil’s son first. Perhaps- I am hopeful that he will be moved to aid us because- because he did not save us when the Fëanorians came.” The soldier dipped his head, and Elrond wondered in what manner the words would find their way back to his foster-fathers.

In Amon Ereb he was a princeling, he had fine clothes and a famous sword that glowed with a bright light when orcs were near, he had access to a vast library, and the best Healers, and he was certain of his place. What did he know of Arvenien, except that once, long ago, it fell in battle, and his parents abandoned him and his brother to the oncoming army?

Elrond was just over twenty years old, a man grown, he did not want to be burdened by ancient evils.

So, he ordered his men to chop down enough wood to make a raft, and such was their loyalty to Maedhros and Maglor that even though most of them had known this retreat would end at an ice flow, they obeyed him without grumbling, though some men, he knew, were not far from laughter, despite the horrific loss of a third of their garrison.

Then he had them strip naked, and bind their armor and scant provisions in a bundle tied around with their clothes, and he steeled himself to wade into the water, and help guide the raft across.

Elf horses trust their riders, so with whispered words, the boldest of their thirty-strong herd was convinced to lie down on the raft rocking in the shadows, and with a great heave, they were out in the river.

It was fast flowing, with a vicious current, and the large chunks of ice that occasionally swung down the river tumbled up foam-spray in their wake. His body recoiled at the touch of frozen air on his skin, but oh, the water was an agony. Already he felt his toes numbing.

“Be swift,” he said. “Don’t let the current take you. Make for the shore in a diagonal line.” They knew what to do, of course. He said it for his own benefit.

The minutes that it took him to cross the river were some of the worst of his life. He was struck on his arm by a branch that cut him open, and at points he lost his footing entirely, and had to swim and he had to maneuver himself and the raft around the glacier-calves and debris.

At length he gained the opposite bank, and he lay gasping on the snow, grateful his clothes bound to the horse were still mostly dry. Already the man who came across with him was preparing to dive back into the river, and he was indescribably grateful that he would not have to do so, but could instead build a fire and tend the horses.

A voiceless, cruel thought slithered through Elrond’s mind and vanished. We are leaving them a trail to Gil-Galad, and it may be that the orcs will turn from pursuing us to attacking them.

When they were dry, or mostly dry, and almost warm again, they clothed themselves, and set off in a brisk trot for Gil-Galad’s outpost. The horses were tense and unhappy, but the sun warmed them and the clear day raised their spirits. They had crossed the river, and none of his men or animals had been lost, and they were about to make an alliance, and perhaps Maedhros and Maglor would not punish him, if he could lessen Gil-Galad’s hatred towards them.

By evening, they were close. Elrond had heard the low-voiced calls of the scouts who he knew by now had them surrounded, and he waited for them to come out, bows drawn, and order them to halt, but nevertheless it was unpleasant when right before him, an elf stepped from the shadows, and demanded he dismount.

“Fëanorians,” he said, almost spat. “Who are you, what is your business on our land?”

“I am Elrond, ward of Maedhros and Maglor, and I’ve come with desperate news. I must speak with the commander of this outpost.”

“And who are these men?”

“This is my brother Elros,” he said, and Elrond watched sudden understanding come into the guard’s eyes.

“You are twins,” he said. “You are-“ and he spoke two words in a language Elrond did not know, Sindarin, he supposed. He knows now the elf spoke their former names. Elrond looked at him blankly. “Eärendil’s heirs,” he said.

“We were,” Elrond said, diplomatically.

“Come,” the man said. “Are these men with you?”

“Yes,” he said. “They are my trusted soldiers.”

“You’re fortunate in your coming,” the guard said. “The King himself is in residence this month, he’s overseeing our defenses. You’ll be able to petition him directly.” The elves relaxed their weapons, and although the soldiers were required to surrender their arms, Elrond and Elros were permitted to retain theirs.

“It’s simpler than I expected it would be,” Elrond noted to his brother, who nodded.

“Too simple. What if they imprison us and make Maedhros and Maglor pay ransom?” The thought had not occurred to Elrond, and he felt suddenly foolish for his trust.

“At least we’ll be warm,” he said. Elros grinned at the thought, and laid his hand on his sword-hilt.

“I can’t believe you didn’t look at a map,” he said.

“I know, I know, it’s the first rule of retreating.”

“I bet Maglor will write a song about it.”

“Spirits and powers, I hope not.”

“I can start if you like.”

“Please don’t.”

“I forgot about the map too,” Elros said. “So it’s not just your fault.”

“Thanks,” Elrond said. “I hope we’ll get assignments in the future, after a disaster like this.”

“I’m sure they’ll forgive us eventually.” They spoke softly, so as not to be overheard, and as they marched through the dense trees, Elrond found himself wondering what kind of an elf Gil-Galad was. Maedhros had forbidden songs that glorified him solely, but he featured in many battles, and Maglor sang of his exploits while Maedhros pretended ignorance. The rules and laws of Amon Ereb were always relaxed for them.

Gil-Galad’s outpost was larger than the Fëanorians’, and it held about a hundred soldiers besides the fifteen who escorted them. The stables were dug into the ground, a wise idea that ensured warmth for the horses while conserving valuable stone, and a stream flowed in front of one high wall, providing immediate fresh water, and another barrier between themselves and the harsh exterior.

They were welcomed into the outpost with stares and silence. The leader ordered them to be given food and a place by the fire, but he took Elrond aside, and told him the king desired an audience.

“My brother is second in command, and I would appreciate-” Elrond said, but the man shook his head.

“The king will speak with him separately. You’re the commander, you must meet his grace first.” So Elrond, still shivering from the cold, ascended the steps to the top of a high stone tower, and was admitted into the presence of the King of the Noldor.

Gil-Galad was a dark haired elf, tall and powerful, and he wore the deep blue colors of his house, and on his head he wore a golden crown with a dark blue gem. It was a Fëanorian cut, that was easily evident, and it gave Elrond an unreasonable stab of pleasure to know that despite the enmities between their Houses, the Fëanorian skill was recognized as far superior to that of any other gem smith.

“Elrond, ward of Maglor and Maedhros, son of Eärendil of Gondolin,” the Commander said, and Gil-Galad smiled broadly. He had an open face, wise and kind, but badly scarred from eye to chin. Elrond bowed to him, but only halfway to his waist, the bow of a man to a king when he is subject to another, greater one.

“Welcome, Cousin!” Gil-Galad exclaimed, and contrary to protocol, he embraced Elrond and held him to his chest. “By the Valar, you’re nothing at all like your father, but you look a fair amount like your mother, and perhaps her mother before her, eh? I must say, as much as I’ve longed to meet you, I didn’t expect to see you here in this damned cold portion of the world, but the mercies of the Valar turn our fortunes in strange manners. I’m so pleased to see you, by the Valar, Eärendil’s boy! He’d be so proud. What are you now, eighteen? And yet to have done what you did- now, my boy, surely I’ll be glad to have you, but if you’ve sworn any inviolate oaths it’s best not to hide it from me now. Tell me what you’ve sworn to your captors, and we’ll decide our course of action from there.” Elrond stood with his mouth slightly agape, trying to process the cataract of words that tumbled from the king.

“I-“

“Osh, I forgot you were raised by Fëanorians. Not very chatty, those men, unless they’ve got some drink in em, and even then all they want to discuss is poetry, especially Maglor. By the Valar that one has a voice. But I’ll ask you more slowly, I’m sure your journey has been difficult. What brings you to the freezing north?” At last, a question which Elrond could answer.

“I am Elrond, ward of Maglor and Maedhros, lords of the Noldor and of Amon Ereb, commander of the fourteenth and northernmost outpost of their kingdom.”

“Ward?” Gil-Galad asked. “I would have thought captive would be more accurate.”

“The Fëanorians are good lords to me, and raised me and my brother as their own sons,” Elrond said. ”I am no more a captive to them than a true son is to his father.”

“Why are you here?” Gil-Galad asked. The warmth had drained from his voice, and in its place was ice as chill as that outside.

“Orcs, King, an army of them, at least five hundred. They slaughtered my scouting party, and left me but thirty warriors, two thirds of my original numbers, and we were forced to flee before them.”

“Is it the custom of Fëanorians to flee before a foe?” Gil-Galad asked. Elrond could not help the redness that flushed across his cheeks.

“I’m not a coward, I’ve been in battle, but I’m no fool either, King. My duty is to my soldiers.”

“Yet you, ward of the Fëanorians, bring them to the stronghold of your enemy. I thought you planned to defect, but since that appears to be my miscalculation, I’ve a mind to imprison you for bringing a foreign army onto my land.”

“That’s your right, King,” Elrond said. “But I’ve no quarrel with you, and I want to propose an alliance.”

“What, are you an ambassador for your Kinslaying, murdering, childstealing, horseshit fathers as well?”

“No,” Elrond said. “But as Commander, I have the ability to propose temporary alliances in order to further our cause. There’s an army a day from your doorstep, King. We’ll fight alongside you, we haven’t a choice. They’re too great a force for you, strong though you are. They’ll devour our peoples alive unless we join together.”

“Valar,” he sighed. “I suppose they’ve had you swear the Oath.”

“My Healer’s Oath?” He asked. “I’m not fully trained yet, I still have my experimental practical, and a course in advanced surgical methods, and I have to live in the healing ward for three years, but I have sworn myself to the study of that art.”

“Not that Oath, you daft fool,” Gil-Galad said, and Elrond bristled at the rudeness of his speech. He was the ward of two very powerful lords, he did not deserve to be mocked and belittled. “The Oath, the Oath of Fëanor.”

“No,” Elrond said. “No. It’s not permitted.”

“How’s that?”

“Maedhros told us that only the direct blood of Fëanor may take it.”

“They didn’t have you swear their abominable-“ Gil-Galad seemed suddenly less angry and more interested. “Very well, lordling. For lack of a better option, we’ll fight alongside you, provided my scouts confirm your reports. But you’ll be under my leadership, and you’ll obey my commands, and once we defeat our enemy, you’ll receive an escort out of our territories.”

“Agreed,” Elrond said. Gil-Galad held out his arm, and Elrond clasped it, and felt almost like a grown elf in the action.

And they had attacked the orcs in a narrow valley, sweeping down from the brush-covered hillsides and slaughtering every single vile creature, and Elrond had saved Gil-Galad from an orc’s sword, and the king allowed them a celebratory feast, and Elrond had sung Maglor’s lament for the slaughter at Alqualondë...

Exiles from gold-crowned Tirion hastened ||sharp-sword-bearing and burning with vengeance-  
Morgoth to down cast, doom wrought harbingers || bringing bold warfare to a new earth, pursuers,  
hunters, Valar-defiant heroes, and sure of their cause.  
Swan-wing-ships white-salt-spray-lapped at rest || in harbor-haven, proud sails taut in the east wind drawn  
over the hills, arrow-swift death loosed kin-bonds and rank hate  
hailed blood in blood...

* * *

Sometimes he thinks about the old world. He dreams of riding through Beleriand, of walking beneath the living stone of Amon Ereb, of kissing his wife in Arvernien. Nothing remains of the lost island now, and in the east, Celeborn and Círdan and Thranduil alone hold it in living memory. What will happen when Beleriand is no longer even a story, when all knowledge of it decays from memory to dust? Will the children of his daughter believe in such a world?

* * *

He is kissing Celebrían, his mouth hot against hers, his lips mixed with her lips, limbs intertwined, clothing cast away, and he does not know whether he sleeps or is awake. He wants and he wants, he gives and devours, he is like the earth-serpent that eats the world and then consumes himself.

* * *

Imagine a man lost on a raft in the wide ocean, the only scrap of living earth left between billows of salt-foam-spew, a single speck of nature suspended between ocean and sky, the fluttering of his heart the focal-point of all existence. And imagine he is drawn, slowly at first, but then too quickly to avoid, towards an island, but then the tide changes, and it is not land that attracts him, but a maelstrom of churning water, that sucks him down to the lightless depths of Ulmo.

That is how Elrond feels when the son of Salgant informs him that Eärendil visited Maglor and asked him what punishment he saw as suitable for his crimes, and Maglor responded that he wished to be hanged.


	10. Chapter 10

He and Celebrían are walking by the ocean. The soft, sun-warmed sand swallows his feet up to his ankles, and the wind wafts through his loose hair, sifting it with cool fingers. It could be a memory from when he was a baby, he thinks, except the instead of his mother’s hand, he holds his wife’s.

His mother has taken to sending invitations to dinner or breakfast, and he has been forced to find increasingly inventive ways of refusing her. Luckily, as a lord, he has a decent amount of practice in disappointing people.

Celebrían is wearing very little, she has exchanged the thick robes of her office for a thin white dress that suggests the contours of her body when he sees her against the sunlight. Her hand is cool and solid, like a pebble polished to smoothness by thousands of years in the sea.

He too is scarcely dressed, and he feels the breeze tug his thin shirt from his skin, and he breathes in the sweet air, and he hears the waves crash beside him, and the crying of the gulls, and in the distance, the twelve Fëanorian horses whickering to each other in their paddock. One of Nerdanel’s grooms had informed him that a stallion had tried to mount a mare, and he had ordered male and female horses to be separated, since he has no room for breeding, but his mind runs ahead to the lineages he could create, if only he had the space he required.

He is content to meander along the beach, admiring pretty shells and tossing rocks into the water, avoiding sea-weed and thinking of nothing.

The High King has ordered a respite to discuss new evidence, and Elrond knows this means Maglor’s willingness to be executed. Maybe they’ll call the whole trial off, and hang him on the next holiday, to general applause.

“You’re troubled,” Celebrían says. “I know we mustn’t speak of it until the trial resumes, but if I can help you-“

“I’m worried my labors will be in vain,” he says. “I’m worried for Maglor.”

“Elrond,” she says. “Have faith.” He looks at her blue eyes, unclouded, uncorrupted by trouble.

“Faith?” He asks. “Faith in what?”

“Faith in your own abilities, and in the presence of justice and mercy in our court, and in the High King, and in the Valar. Nothing that is not their will shall happen.” In the old world, his wife was not one for worship. She barely knew the ritual prayers that Maedhros and Maglor had forced him to memorize from when he was very young, she could not even list the divine aspects and manifestations, and she did not know the full complement of Their names. She has not seemed particularly pious in Valinor, but he supposes that she spent many years among the Valar, and so, perhaps, she believes in them more than she seemed to in the past.

Indeed, she had seemed horrified when he tried to teach the twins the old liturgies.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with that claptrap,” she said. “It’s in a language they scarcely can understand, Fëanorian Quenya, and if they prayed in that tongue they’d be liable to be stoned. It’s pretentious, it’s ostentatious, and it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s important to me,” he said. “I prayed every night with Maedhros and Maglor. And Fëanorian Quenya is my first language, I would like for my children to understand it, even though I know they must speak Sindarin.”

“Do you truly believe the Valar listen to your prayers?” She asked. “You’re an important elf, Elrond, but do you think they care so much for you that they harken towards your every syllable?”

“No,” he says. “No, I know better than that. I’m not self-conceited, and I’m not vain. But it’s an exercise in piety and discipline and humility.”

“Well, you are their father,” she said. “And if you feel the need to shackle our children with superstition, then so be it. I will not stop you; but I’ll not encourage it either.” She kissed him, to show she did not mean the harshness in her words, and he kissed her back. How simple their disagreements had been, back before the disaster.

“Very well,” he says. There’s no harm in hoping for the best, and he feels hopeful in the sunlight. She smiles at him, and presses her lips to his ear, and he returns her kiss, and embraces her, and, feeling something like how a lolling puppy dog must feel when it turns round to chase its tail, he pulls away from her, and strips off his shirt, and charges into the ocean. The surf sprays up beneath him, and he goes deeper, swimming now, he ducks his head beneath a wave and when he comes up, she is before him, her white shift abandoned. He kisses her again, and again, and when they dive under to avoid a wave, she swims away from him, further out. “I’ll beat you,” she calls, her laughter rising like dew.

“I’ll catch you,” he responds, striking out after her, his war-hardened muscles easily cutting through the ocean water.

“Then I want to be caught,” she says, but she dives under a wave and vanishes from his sight. He follows her, and they twist through the water like porpoises playing in the shallows. They twine over each other, touching and feeling, never lingering, and they swim out and out and out, until the shore is distant, and a new island rises up to meet them.

“Have you ever been there?” He asks her, kissing her throat, and she shakes her head, splashing him with sea-spray.

“I’ve never been out this far.”

“Let’s swim to it.” A current is starting, and it bears them easily to the island, which has a large, low cove perfect for staging ships, but it is empty. Ashore on the white, gleaming beach, he sees an incline that rises up to a slab of golden stone, and a river of sweet water. A deer path leads up to the mountaintop, and he and Celebrían wander up it, stopping to admire the fruiting trees, and the abundance of fine wood, and the little animals that nose out from the brush to observe them. A doe with a late fawn hears them coming and lifts her head, and, curious, comes to sniff them. Celebrían holds out her hand, slowly, so as not to startle the animal, and lays her fingers on its neck. Elrond crouches to observe the fawn, and it comes up to him, cautiously. It is large, since autumn is half completed, but it still retains a trace of its baby-pattern of white dots and stripes.

The deer reminds him of Elladan and Elrohir’s first hunt. They were close to manhood, almost seventeen, and their mother had finally granted them permission to sharpen their spears and go out into the woods with a small party and hunt boar.

Elrond disliked hunting, and usually left it to his seneschal, but he had decided to accompany his sons in order to ensure their protection, and to ensure they received just admiration for their first kill. He intended to send them to Galadriel’s court to learn from the bowmen of the Haradrim, since both his sons showed an aptitude for the weapon, and he wanted to observe their weaknesses and their strengths in the field.

Although she was a fair shot, Celebrían declined to come, and he was grateful. They had begun, tentatively, to try for another child, and the thought of her facing down a boar, perhaps with his babe within her, made him uncomfortable. Better by far he need only worry about his sons.

He took along Glorfindel and Gildor and Erestor and a few trusted others, along with beaters and hound-keepers and groundsmen, and he asked, out of the twins’ hearing, that they be given every opportunity for first blood. Maglor had so arranged his own first hunt.

They set out in the morning, driving up into the mountains, but by midday they had shot only a brace of grouse and a thin squirrel, all three Glorfindel’s contribution, and spirits were flagging. On the return home, he spotted Elladan and Elrohir, bows drawn, far from the group, and he used his Ring to see what they saw. It was a fawn, tender and newly born, stumbling on its uneven hooves. Its coloring was white, a rarity, a wonder, and he realize with a shock of something like terror that it had a twin, just as white as it. He waited for the sound of their arrows, he waited to see the deer falter and fall, but the shot was never taken. His children unstrung their bows and returned to the group.

He talked of this with Celebrían later.

“I didn’t know whether to beat them or kiss them,” he said. He held her in his arms, and his breath was ragged, because they had lain together twice already. “Are they merciful, or are they weak? Should I be concerned or proud? I know what Maedhros would do, he’d’ve made me skin them, but what’s the greater flaw? Are they compassionate, or are they cowards?”

“When last did you go hunting, Husband?” Celebrían asked, tracing his back with her fingers. “When did you last kill so much as a rabbit?”

“I don’t think I’ve hunted since we celebrated the twins’ weaning.”

“And I know why, though you may not like to admit it. You don’t enjoy the killing. We didn’t need the meat, Elrond, we’re hardly starving. They saw two strange twins, beautiful and unusual, and they felt compassion. They’re children. Don’t punish them because they haven’t yet tasted bloodlust. Be glad they can live in a world where slaughter is not a necessity for them.”

“But Cel, it will be. They will have to kill, often, often and without mercy.”

“And they will,” she promised. “But there was no necessity to kill today. Be glad for that.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It is harder going when they come to the solid rock, which appears to be a massive deposit of marble. Out of the forest it soars up, high into the sky. They take another route, through the trees, and they come out on an outcropping of rock above the ocean. They can see far across the island, and the bay where they landed glistens, and a wide river, slow enough for barges and large enough for pleasure-boats, winds down the other side. The rock towers up, and stretches across the island, and in the distance-

“It’s a chain of islands,” Celebrían says. “It’s an archipelago, and no one’s ever touched them.”

There is an open patch of ground, and they descend to investigate. A small stream hurries along one side of it, and the grass is rich and verdant. A tree bearing ripe apples grows beside the stream, and they sit on its bank, eating the sweet fruit.

“We could keep our horses here,” Celebrían says.

“And we could have ships again,” he bursts out, his smile suddenly uncontainable. “And we could cause the river to flow through the rock, so we have fresh water, and we can hollow it out and live in gold-flecked marble-“

“And we can grow our foodstuffs on the next island, and the next, and keep some wild for hunting and sport, and we can give Glorfindel and Ecthelion their own holding, where their people can live under them, and Gildor can dwell with us and keep our soldiers, and Erestor can create us a library, and we’ll recall all our old servants and vassals and friends and kinsmen, and we’ll ask them to help us, and we’ll live, Sinda and Teleri and Noldo and Avari all mixed together.”

“Truly?” He asks. She nods, and kisses him. “I thought I was done being a lord,” he says. “It brought me no joy, I hated it, I hated my circlet and my duties and the fawning obeisance I suffered, but Celebrían, I think I only hated missing you. I want this city.“

“It will be a kingdom,” she says. “It’ll have to be, we’ll have so many people.”

“Will we?” He asks. She laughs, her eyes twinkling like two small stars.

“Since you’ve returned, I’ve received letters from our old subjects, and many who served my parents, or Gil-Galad, or Círdan, or your parents, asking if they can pledge their loyalty to us. I’ve had to employ a girl just to write responses.”

“It’s everything we could want.”

“It is,” she says. “I want it.” She kisses him, she presses herself against him. “Elrond,” she says. “Elrond I want you.”

He can see the scars on her body; they twist through her skin like veins of ore in a mine. He looks further, he sees her breasts already teased to firmness by the wind’s touch, he sees her strong arms and her stomach, the triangle of her hair, and her shapely legs. Scars tangle around each other, they score her skin like a child’s irrational art. He touches a vicious one on her stomach, one that he could not close, even with the aid of a Song.

“Cel,” he says. “Did you ever blame me?”

“Of course I did, Elrond,” she says. “When our sons brought me back, when I opened my eyes and found myself in Imladris, I hated you for saving my life when you failed to save me. I hated you for abandoning my bed to patrol our borders, only for you to overlook my captors when they took me to their beds. I hated you for ever having touched me, I thought of how we had lain together in the past, and I felt only fear and disgust, and I hated you for seeing me as I lay broken.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

“I don’t hate you now, my love,” she says. “I can’t hate you any more than I can hate the sun. I only hated you because my mind had been poisoned. But I have healed since then, healed mind and body and soul all together, and now I would like to help you heal. We can wait, Elrond, if you want to wait, or we can only touch, or you could watch me touch myself, if you want.”

“Alright,” he says. His heart eases its anxious fluttering, and she lays on the green grass, and propped on one elbow, and she touches his face with her hand.

“Do you know how many nights I touched myself and thought of you?” She asks. “I tried to pretend my fingers were yours, but you’ve a subtleness to your hands, my lord, that I can’t emulate.”

“What did you do?” He asks. She smiles at him, and draws her hand over her breasts, her fingers barely touching her skin.

“I touch myself like you do, when I stand before you in only my corset. You like my corsets, don’t you Elrond?”

“I do,” he says. “The way they cup your breasts, the way the knots trace down your back, they’re very pleasant to look upon.” She laughs, softly, at his words.

“And then I pinch my nipples, and I pretend you’ve bitten them,” she says. “And I imagine you telling me my breasts are as beautiful as two towers of ivory rising from white sand.”

“I’m quite the poet,” he teases.

“You are,” she says. “I pretend I hear you telling me my hair is like a shower of water spraying from a rock cleft, and my lips are dyed in scarlet, and my cheeks are like pomegranate, and my body smells of myrrh and fragrant spices. I pretend it is your voice that croons to me, low in my ear, your breath warm against my neck, as I slip my other hand between my legs.”

“Are you wet, thinking of me?” He asks.

“I’m so wet I could take you inside me,” she says. “I’m so wet and you haven’t even touched me, so I slip two fingers inside myself and I pretend they are your fingers, but they are not enough for me, they do not satisfy me. I touch myself, Elrond, I circle around myself and I press and I approximate the rhythm your hips would make as you moved inside me, and I think of your face above me, full of love and desire and lust, and I imagine that you press me into my bed, and tower over me, and your fingers move more quickly, and more, and-“ she gasps, and her words falter away to nothingness, and she rubs at herself desperately, her feet curling into the grass, and she chases her pleasure, and she falls apart beneath her own fingers, and she collapses onto the grass, her breath uneven. He takes her hand and sucks her clean, tasting her arousal, and she moans at the sensation of his tongue around her fingers.

When she sits up, he is hard and firm, and she smiles and kisses his lips, then slides her tongue into his mouth.

“Do you want me?” she asks. He does, he does, but- “Can I take you in my mouth?” she asks.

“If you’re sure-“

“Elrond,” she says. “I want you however you will give yourself to me.”

“I don’t want to spend in your mouth,” he says. The words are not easy to find; is it possible that they once understood each other without needing to discuss and suggest and negotiate? It is possible he once heard her thoughts in his head?

“A waste,” she says. “But one I can accept. Won’t you lie down?” He does as she asks, and she moves so she is laying between his legs. “I’m not going to bite you,” she says. “Or at least, not very hard.”

“I know,” he says. She touches his stomach, she traces her fingers along a knife’s scar, she presses a kiss to it, and then she makes a line of kisses to his hip, and then she moves her hands and her mouth and she kisses him-

“Elrond,” she protests. “You can’t move, my darling, else how will the pleasure build? Stay still.” Her words chasten him, he lies down, and she draws her tongue along the length of him. He digs his nails into the rich earth and comes away with clumps of grass in his grip. He looks at her, hale and silver and achingly beautiful, draped over his legs, one hand supporting her as she slowly envelops him in her mouth, and he shivers at the feeling of her, hot and wet, closing around him. She sucks, gently, then swallows him deeper, and wraps her hand around his base and moves in tandem. Pleasure ricochets through him, crashing through his body like the echo of a rock dropped into an abyss. He knows he is close to his release, he shudders at her touch, he reaches down and draws her away from him, up to his lips, and her hands finish him with practiced ease. He kisses her, he tastes himself in her mouth, he wraps his arms around her and holds her to him, he feels the long length of her body beneath his.

“Better?” She asks him. He kisses her, he wants to swallow her in his kisses, he wants to tell her how much he missed her, how poorly he managed her absence, how unrelentingly, achingly difficult it was for him to rule the city without her, he wants to tell her his sorrows, his anguishes, his many regrets, but he doesn’t have words for them, so he kisses her. It takes until he is sucking a mark into her neck to realize the slight, taut tension of their bond. He marvels over it in his mind, he reaches out for her and she touches him through it, and he feels, faintly, her joy at his touch.

“Hello,” he whispers, inside her mind. She responds by burying her fingers in his hair, and pressing her lips open-mouthed to his neck.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

It takes them a long time to make their way back to her cottage, but he scarcely notices. He can hear her thoughts trickling through the back of his mind, he can sense her emotions as though they were shadows of his own. How had he forgotten this closeness, this unity?

They swim back; the current has changed and it is an easy task, they could float across, and they are both quite hungry. He finds his discarded shirt and pulls it over his head, and she takes up her white shift and pulls it over herself. Already the afternoon feels like a dream, except that he can touch her mind with his.

“My love,” he says. She is glistening in the evening light, her hair loose about her face, her skin sun-browned and her cheeks pink from exertion. She smiles at him, a warm, unguarded smile, and she wraps her arm around his own.

“Let’s find dinner,” she says. “I asked our steward to buy fresh fish from the market.” He walks with her up to their house, and she smiles at the steward who admits them.

“My lady, my lord,” he says. “I’ll call for dinner.”

“Thank you,” she says. They wander up to their bedroom, where a bath of cool water awaits them, and she scrubs herself quickly and efficiently, then he takes his turn. He finds her pondering her dresses. “What do you think?” She asks. He kisses her neck, he presses his lips to the slight bruise rising on her collarbone. She leans against him as he wraps his arms around her.

“You’re perfect like this,” he says. She rolls her eyes, and he kisses her breast, then bites it gently, then kisses her lips. “I think I’ve never seen a lovelier vision.”

“They’re preparing our dinner,” she protests, but she sinks backward onto their bed, and draws him to her, and he kisses her lips and her neck and her breasts and her stomach, and then her thighs, then, slowly, teasingly, he makes his way to the place between them. She gasps and scores his back with her nails. “Elrond,” she sighs, and he tastes her, flicking his tongue inside her, and he holds her to him, and he feels her mind embrace his own.

———————————————————

Shortly after nightfall, Gil-Galad is announced by the steward, and Elrond and Celebrían are forced to scramble into their clothes in order to receive him. He is pouring himself a glass of Celebrían’s spirits when they emerge from her bedchamber, and he looks them over and laughs.

“Evening, lovers,” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“We’ve time for you, Gil-Galad,” Celebrían says with a smile, and the king laughs.

“You honor me, then. Can I offer you some of your spirits?”

“Please,” Elrond says, and Gil-Galad pours them two full glasses, and they raise them in a toast, and drink.

“Won’t you sit?” Celebrían asks. He does, and Celebrían takes her place across from him. Elrond sits beside her, and she takes his hand and holds it with her own.

“Thank you.” Gil-Galad looks at them, truly looks at them, and Elrond turns from his piercing gaze, but Celebrían meets it. “You’ve been parted for so long,” he says. “I don’t want to be the cause of more waiting. I can return another time.”

“We’ve been married a few thousand years,” she says with a laugh. “We can withstand an interruption without too much hardship. What brings you here, Gil-Galad? We’re a short ride to Tirion, but it’s still almost a day’s travel, so you must have some purpose.”

“I do,” he says. “I was having dinner with Turgon, actually, and he told me that you’d agreed to accept Ecthelion’s oath of fealty.”

“We have,” Elrond says.

“Is that for Glorfindel’s sake, or do you have some larger purpose?”

“Both,” they say, and smile at each other, and laugh at their simultaneous speech, and Gil-Galad makes a face of mock disgust.

“We’re founding a city,” Elrond says. “Once this issue with Maglor is resolved.”

“And you haven’t approached me?” Gil-Galad asks.

“Do you want to join our city?” Celebrían’s eyebrows raise, slightly. “Do you want to call him lord and me lady and bow to us and obey our orders and subsume your Household to our own?”

“I was never supposed to be High King,” Gil-Galad says. “Turgon had heirs, he had Idril, and Idril’s son, but necessity dictated I wear the crown. But you’re the son of Idril’s son, Elrond, and you’re a lord with a level head and exceptional judgement. It would bring me no shame to link my Household with your own.”

“What do you think, Cel?” Elrond asks. She smiles softly.

“We’d love to have you,” she says. “And once the trial is completed, we will show you the place we’ve chosen.”

“Turgon seems to think we’ll be recalled shortly,” Gil-Galad says. “It seems Eärendil wants to dispense with his testimony, and begin the process of sentencing.”

“I’m not expecting a good outcome,” Elrond says. Gil-Galad nods, and Celebrían kisses his cheek.

“We can’t know until we’re summoned, so let’s make the best of the situation. Do you want to go for a ride with us, Gil-Galad? Nerdanel gave Elrond some astoundingly good horses, and we’ve been meaning to test them.”

“I’d better not,” he says. “It’s late, and I wanted to visit my mother. She’s not too far from here.”

“Well,” Elrond says. “We appreciate you coming to us. You’ll be a welcome part of our Household. We need a Head of Armory.”

“You honor me,” Gil-Galad says. “Until next week.”

“Until then,” Celebrían says. She kisses his cheek, and he kisses her hand, and embraces Elrond, and then he is out the door, already calling his attendant to bring him his horse and light a lantern. Celebrían bursts out laughing. “Gil-Galad the prude!” she exclaims. “You would think he caught us halfway through the act; he took that worse than Glorfindel did when he found us in the council chamber.”

“Poor elf,” Elrond says. “Still, if he wants to serve us, he’d best become accustomed.”

“Perhaps we should begin the founding of this city in earnest,” she says. “We’ll have to discuss our intentions with so many, and we’ll need Finarfin’s permission-“

“Tomorrow,” Elrond says. “Tomorrow. For now, we’re alone again, and I’ve a mind to see you in my bed.”

“Oddly enough, I am similarly disposed.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read CS Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, and that helped me to understand Elwing in a way I never had before. I see her as a kind of Platonic figure seeking after Truth, which makes her a good deal more positive than simply a jewel-jealous mother. (As a side note, I’m currently reading David Slavitt’s translation of the Oresteia, and I’m incorporating a lot of his ideas of justice/mercy in this story.) I’d highly recommend those books if you’re ever looking for something truly exceptional to read. One more chapter and this work will be at an end. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented. You all mean so much to me, and your support has been very encouraging.

Celebrían stirs when Elrond slips his arm from beneath her neck, and she opens her eyes fully when he rises from their bed. Over the course of their long separation, he had forgotten how sweet it was to awaken beside her, to listen to the even sound of her breaths, to watch the slight rising and falling of her chest, to stretch out a hand and touch her, solid as a mountain, real as sunlight.

“Good morning,” she whispers. She stretches, and the bedspread shifts to reveal the sun-darkened skin of her shoulders as she props herself on her arm. The faint pre-dawn light sifts the air of their bedchamber with golden filaments, and she lies in the center of it all, glowing. He is struck by her beauty, her sheer radiance, her sea-blue eyes, her hair as silver as the moon, her sweet red lips. He thinks, not for the first time, that he would have liked another child, one that shared her looks instead of his. He could pass for mortal, in the old days, before his city, he often did so, but no creature who even glimpsed his wife could ever mistake her for anything but an elf.

“Morning, my love,” he says.

“Do you have time to kiss me this morning?” she asks. “Or perhaps, do more than kiss me?”

“I’m going to visit Nerdanel,” he says. “I thought I ought to, before the sentencing tomorrow.”

“Shall I come with you, my husband?” she asks. If she comes with him, she wi be his comfort and his consolation, his love brought back to him after all manner of peril and danger. What comfort does Nerdanel have, with a dead husband, and six dead children, now soon to be seven?

“I think I should tell her alone,” he says. she nods her head.

“I will pray for peace for you,” she says. The words give him pause; they are not ones she often spoke in the old world. He prayed for her, of course, but he never truly believed his prayers were listened to. What did the Valar care for the whims of a single elf? But prayer was a lord’s duty, a way of averting wrath and ruin from his people, and so, quite regularly, he took himself to shrines and alters and offered sacrifices of flowers and herbs and occasionally still-beating hearts, and he said the words that ensured health and wisdom, until one day his wife was taken. After that, his prayers stopped almost entirely. But he had never known her to pray before stone images of their gods, except when her duties forced her to, and she used to joke afterwards in a way that made him fear she would profane his House.

“Thanks,” he says. He dresses, and just before he leaves, she snags his hand with hers from her place beneath the covers of the bed.

She kisses his wrist, then his knuckles. “Elrond, love, I’m sorry. If I can do anything for you-“

“It doesn’t feel real,” he says. He had wept when he told her of Maglor’s words to Eärendil, but the tears are absent today. Perhaps he has cried out his entire allotment of tears. “It still seems hypothetical, like a guessing game.”

“I’m sorry, my love,” she says. “I’ll be here until about noon, but then I’ve a luncheon with your mother. If you need me and find me absent, send a messenger and I’ll hurry back.”

“I’ll try to be back before then,” he says. She kisses his hand, and he steels himself with the thought of his duties. He owes it to Nerdanel to tell her of this news.

He rides through the already-busy streets to Nerdanel’s house, urging his horse through the crowds of people.

He has a sudden vision of a city with separate streets for horses and carts, and elves on foot, and he stores the idea with his others. He knocks on the door to Nerdanel’s house, and he is admitted into her workroom.

Nerdanel stands in a ray of sunlight that slants through a glassless window and into her workroom. Dustmotes float around her, borne up on the slight draft that wafts through the room, hanging on sea-scent and the faint sounds of the street. Her carving is still indistinct, a large block of marble, white stone and silver-veined, taller than he is, about as wide as he is tall, and marked with faint chisel-lines. He tries to imagine what form sleeps within it, he peers at the curves and contours, he imagines he makes out a woman half-dressed, or a swift horse, but he has no hand for sculpture, and no skill in understanding shapeless rock. The woman looks at her marble, unmoving as her materials.

“Lady Nerdanel,” he says, at last, undone by the silence.

“Elrond,” she responds. She shifts, and the dust shifts with her, surrounding her, falling around her like light rain. “How is your wife?”

“She is well,” he says.

“Good,” Nerdanel responds. “You seem happier than when last we spoke. I am glad to see that you are healing.”

“Thank you,” he says. He has received similar statements recently, from Turgon when they dined with him last night, and from Finarfin, in passing. Glorfindel had kissed his forehead and blessed him in his new peace.

“What brings you to me, Elrond?” She asks.

“Maglor told Eärendil that he deserves to die,” Elrond says. “And I have tried to convince him to recant, but I have been unsuccessful.” Nerdanel does not look up, she does not meet his gaze. She touches the marble, a slight brushing with her fingers, as though she were feeling the brow of a feverish child.

“He took the lives of many,” she says, at last. “And I am glad that he does not hold his deeds in pride. His humility and guilt are an honor to him, after his wickednesses.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, Lady Nerdanel. I have tried everything in my power, I have attempted to engender pity, I have shown in every way I can that Maglor was not evil, is not evil, but if he contradicts my testimony, there is little I can do to save him.”

“You do not have to justify yourself to me,” Nerdanel says. “I have heard your testimony, I have found it moving. I learned many things about my son through you. He was so young when he left Aman, he was still almost a child. You knew him when he was a man, and I envy you your closeness to him.”

“He will not speak with me,” Elrond says. “He refuses to discuss his case with me, he looks at me as though I have unmade all his hopes. I think he half-hates me.”

“I know the look,” Nerdanel says. “I received it from Fëanor when I refused to enter into exile with him. Maglor was never much like his father, he was not impatient, he did not burn like a firebrand, but he did smolder over old injuries, and worry and fret over past wrongs, especially those which he accomplished. I imagine when he looks at you, he sees you as you were in Arvenien, a little boy of six years old, crying for his mother, an orphan doomed by his lust for the Silmaril.”

“I wish that he had come to me in Imladris,” Elrond says. The thought has haunted him, it has overwhelmed him with its implications. “He could have found solace, found forgiveness, found a people willing to accept him. He could have loved my children as a father loves his son’s son.”

“I do not think he could have borne your love,” Nerdanel says. “I think he needed to suffer; he needed to cleanse the dross from his soul. The agonies of solitude purified him.”

“I wanted to apologize,” he says. “And I will return your horses and send gold for the robes.”

“Elrond,” Nerdanel says. She touches the marble again, drawing her fingers down the silver veins. “I did not clothe you in payment for your services, and the horses are not your wages. You are Maglor’s son, you have made that evident. I have my own Household, I have no more claim to Fëanor’s than Celebrían would have to yours as Eärendil’s son. I do not want the burdens of this people. You may absolve the oaths sworn to the House, or you may bind their makers as your people. I have no desire to continue yoking myself to Fëanor’s name. Now that you are here, at last, I will rejoin my father’s kin.”

“I will maintain Fëanor’s House for you until you desire to return,” Elrond says. Nerdanel takes up her chisel and her hammer, and she carves a thin flaking of stone.

“By the sun and the moon, Elrond, I will never return until my husband does, and only the Valar know when or if that will be allowed. I shall be quite happy to be Mahtan’s daughter again, instead of Fëanor’s wife.”

“I pray you may find peace,” he says. “It is an awful thing to be parted from a spouse, let alone from children, and I mourn for your suffering.”

“And you, Elrond,” Nerdanel says. “Maglor was fortunate in you. I am honored to consider you the son of my son. But do not mourn overmuch for Maglor. I think perhaps, even now, we do not fully understand the Valar’s purpose.” Elrond dips his head, and Nerdanel strikes the stone again, then again in quick succession, and a long, thin, even sliver of marble peels away.

“What are you carving?” he asks. She smiles at his question.

“I have a model formed of clay,” she says. “Come look.” A table pressed against the wall groans beneath the weight of a model as long as his arm. The carving is of a woman, tall and beautiful, caught mid-transformation. Her legs have just begun to leave the platform where she stands, already something more than human, curling into a bird’s shape. Her right arm is stretched out, but feathers have blossomed at her fingertips, and the bones beneath her skin are bowed into the form of a wing. Her left hand holds aloft a great gem, vibrant and illuminating, and her gaze is fixed on its light, constant and certain. There is love in her eyes, and loss, and sorrow, but beyond all else there is a yearning for the beauty of the gem that is reflected in equal splendor in her pupils.

She is like a woman enchanted, overcome, drawn onwards by her knowledge of beauty and blessedness, possessed by the spirit of the highest, holiest things, a half-mortal maiden grasping after the divine, and grasped in turn, changing even as she leaps, entirely faithful to the beauty that she worships, from matter to spirit.

“Spirits and powers,” he whispers. The old oath is torn from him in Fëanorian Quenya. “Spirits and powers, she is not abandoning me because she does not love me, but because she does. She loves me so much that she knows my life is nothing unless she bears the Silmaril to Valinor. She sees my suffering, she sees it all, she mourns for me and yet she finds the strength to leave me, to draw after the beauty and the glory of the Silmaril, to save me by it. She relinquishes me, perhaps to death, and she sorrows for it, and for her sundering from me, and yet she chooses the immortal over what may perish, and she chooses divine beauty over the vastness of her love, and by doing so loves me all the more.”

“You see, then?” Nerdanel asks.

“I do,” he says. “I see as though I had been blind, and have just now been granted my eyes again.”

“It is a gift for you,” she says. “When your city is built, and your sons are present, and your body healed entirely of its sorrows, then it will be carved from marble, and it will be yours.”

“It is a fearful thing,” he says. “But I will treasure it, Nerdanel. And while I have a city and am a lord, while I have a hovel and pauper’s food, you shall have a place within my House, as a great lady, and a kinswoman.”

“You do me honor,” she says. “And I will not forget it. You are a good man, Elrond, and I am glad that in you I find one deed of my son’s that I need not mourn or regret. Thank you for your stalwart defense of him. Be at ease. I will see you tomorrow.” Elrond kisses her hand, and pauses for a moment overcome by the model for her statue, and then he bows to her and leaves her.

He finds with some surprise that it is past midday; he realizes he stood enraptured by the carving for close to four hours. He is shaken by the lost time, and half-surprised, but in truth the carving has a divine quality he is terrified to think of.

Elrond mounts his horse and rides down to the crowded wharf, picking his way through fishmongers and sailors and noblemen and peasants. By the time he arrives at Elwing’s house, the afternoon is near halfway accomplished.

He knocks and is admitted. The steward bids him wait, and he does, and then he is shown into an interior garden filled with hanging plants and bright, verdant trees that twist upwards towards the blue sky. His wife is seated beside Elwing, drinking wine, and she rises when he enters and exclaims in happiness.

Elrond smiles at her, but he goes to his mother, and kneels at her feet, and takes her hands as a supplicant would, and presses his face to her knees.

“Lady,” he says. “I have done you a great wrong, and thought many evils about you. I have rejected you and wished you ill; I have taught my children untruths about you, I have poisoned my Household against you. I have not fulfilled my duty to you as your son, I have not honored you as men honor their mothers. I have made myself a victim of your hatred, instead of the benefactor of your love. I pray your mercy on me, and I beg your forgiveness as a slave begs from a king.”

“Elrond,” the woman says, and then she says the name she gave him. She touches his chin, and draws him up so his gaze meets her own. Her eyes are grey and beautiful, lit from within by the fire of her love. “The merciful are honored by the Valar, and I seek to be one of them, but there is no need for mercy here. My son, my child, I have mourned for your sorrows, and bitterly wept for my part in them. I have no reason to forgive you, because you have done nothing evil by me.”

“I have, I have!” He exclaims. He feels delirious, he sees behind his eyes the image of his mother yearning for the Silmaril’s light, enraptured by Valinor, bound in service to the good and the beautiful, he sees her agony at abandoning him, and her faith in his survival. “I hated you for leaving me, I hated you for choosing a gem over me, but I see now, I have seen it-“

“Elrond,” Celebrían says. He can hear the concern in her voice, and he feels at a great distance the touch of her hand on his shoulder. “My darling?”

“My dear son,” Elwing says. She draws him up and embraces him, she wraps her arms around him, and she kisses his forehead and she holds him to her. “I have wanted to do this for seven thousand years.” Her eyes are teary, her voice is hoarse. “I do not blame you for hating me. I knew you would, a mother’s duty is to her children, after all. I have loved you for so long, I have rejoiced in your happinesses and I have mourned for you, Elrond.”

“I never considered that you might love me,” he says.

“I do,” she says. “My child, my son, I do.”

“Elrond, what is this about?” Celebrían asks. “In all our many years together I have never known you to be so mercurial. You were adamantly opposed to seeing your mother when last we discussed this issue.”

“I know,” he says. “But I have had a change of heart.” He allows his memory of the model to slip between their bond, but his wife does not seem particularly overwhelmed by the intensity of the image.

“I’m glad,” she says, but he knows she does not understand. Elrond sees that his mother’s eyes could be his own, he sees that she is beautiful, truly beautiful, the kind of beauty that draws the gaze and holds it. She moves in radiance, she sits in sunlight, she glows with the unearthly aura of the Silmaril. Her robes are fine but simple, and her long, dark hair is loose and unbound. It is disconcerting for him to see his own features within hers, like a mirror that reflects imperfectly. He has her nose, and her forehead, and her round cheeks, and her thick, long eyelashes, and her broad, sturdy shoulders. If he wasn’t wearing formal robes, if he allowed his hair down, if he hid his tired, war-worn face, he might be indistinguishable from her.

The thought pleases him.

“Your wife tells me it is your wish to found a city,” Elwing says. “That is good. Eärendil cannot manage a Household, and I have little desire to do so. I instruct elves in the art of dialectic and argument, and this consumes much of my time. I find ruling our noblemen a great burden. I will consign them to you, if you are willing.”

“We are,” Elrond says. “We have resolved to take all the elves we can, and we will have room enough. We intend to settle on the eastern islands just off the coast from Celebrían’s house.”

“I don’t know them,” she says. “But then again, I travel little nowadays, and Valinor still holds surprises for those who have been here almost from the beginning. Did you know that there is no end to it? It just continues on, each mountain unfolding to reveal a plain, each plain a forest, each forest a vast sea dotted with islands. There is all manner of wonder in this country, and each place is more beautiful than the last.”

“Perhaps we will reach the end,” Celebrían says. “Or if not us, our sons. Elladan and Elrohir are single-minded when it comes to accomplishing a task they set their minds to.”

“I look forward to meeting them,” Elwing says. “My husband tells me they are generous and noble and wise.”

“They’re born swordsmen, and excellent with the bow,” Elrond says, and then feels a stab of regret for his words. What good are weapons in this land? What use are soldiers in a place of peace? What will his mother care if he has trained his sons to slaughter with efficiency?

“They saved my life,” Celebrían says. “Elladan especially. He knew as soon as he touched me what had been done, and he Sang such Songs as I have never heard before. I think he must have invented them note by note.”

“You have every reason to be proud of them,” Elwing says. “And I regret that I was not there to see them as children, but perhaps you will wish to have another. Valinor can awaken child-longing, especially to the newcomers.”

“Would that we could,” Celebrían says. He takes her hand in his own, he sits down beside her, and Elwing pours him wine, and they talk until the sun sets and the evening star ascends high above them.

* * *

He does not sleep that night. Instead, he paces before the fire in Celebrían’s sitting room, his heart thundering in his ears. He does not even know if he will be permitted to speak at the sentencing; Maglor has refused entirely to see him, he does not know how to prepare for what will be decided tomorrow.

In the early hours of the morning, Celebrían comes out from her bedchamber and sits before the fire, and he sits beside her and rests his head on her lap, and she runs her fingers through his hair. Her touch comforts him.

* * *

After Elros died, Elrond deserted. It was partly accidental; he missed a meeting with the king because his band was waylaid by a small ambush, and he arrived to find instructions for him alone, to relinquish his soldiers to Lord Iaudor’s command, and to join the king further south.

Lord Iaudor offered him an escort, he refused. He wheeled his horse southwards and rode into the wilderness.

But as he rode, he thought of Elros. He had received the messenger into his tent, he had seen the sigil of Númenor, he had known, or he had feared he had known.

“Lord Elrond, Herald of Gil-Galad?” Yes, that was his name, his title. He was no prince of Amon-Ereb, no lord of Fëanor’s House. After his first meeting with Gil-Galad, he had dreamed of seeing the man’s Court, of browsing his vast library, of studying under his Healers. Amon-Ereb felt provincial and backwards, he wanted to meet Gil-Galad’s Court, and take a wife from amongst his people, and become Eärendil’s son.

And he had been given a good position, and the duties and the title of Herald, and he had been welcomed into the King’s Court, and he had been introduced to the women who wore arm-baring dresses and who talked in front of men immodestly, and who left their hair uncovered, in contrast to the Fëanorian women, who bowed their heads and sat in silence, and when he and Elros had discussed the women in hushed tones, whispering about impropriety and dishonor, Gil-Galad had scolded them and forced them to serve under one of his wardenesses, until they rid themselves of Fëanorian prejudice. 

He had heard the news of his brother’s death without seeming to hear anything. He shut his eyes, as if by doing so he could close out the sound of the messenger’s voice. The blood pounded in his head like the relentless surging of the ocean. He dismissed the messenger. He stared at his armor, emblazoned with the king’s sigil.

When the king summoned him, alone, and he rode out into the woods, he simply rode north instead of south.

It had been an accident, at first. He took one detour, then another, and when he found himself days removed from his intended goal, he decided to simply ride away. Gil-Galad held his Oath, it was true, but Elrond had been raised by Kinslayers. He could break his Oaths without compunction.

He wandered northwards, into the mountains. His horse went half-lame so he lived for a time beside a river, catching fish and practicing his swordwork, running through the drills from his youth, pretending Elros stood beside him.

He raised his sword up, he held it straight before him, he lunged forwards, he fell back, he twisted, he cut. If Gil-Galad sent men after him to arrest him as an Oath-Breaker, would he refuse to go with them? He had slain elves before, but never in battle. He had executed fourteen spies turned by the Enemy, and almost quadruple the number of deserters and cowards, and one elf who had murdered his brother in a fit of fury over a mishandled inheritance. All these he had slain, all at the behest of Gil-Galad.

Elrond called himself deserter when he rose in the morning and scrounged for food and buried his fire and began his ceaseless wandering. He imagined how the noose would feel, clasped like a cloak around his neck. Sometimes he thought Gil-Galad might have mercy on him and cut off his head, an easier death, and a nobler one.

Who would be responsible for that deed? Glorfindel, perhaps, or maybe Gildor, or even Galadriel. The King had executioners enough for his purposes.

Elrond lived for one season, then two, in the wild. Then they blended together, and he simply lived. He dreamed of Elros, he spoke to Elros, he slew orcs when he came upon them. His horse broke a leg and he slaughtered it too, and continued on foot, always heading nowhere, wanting to go nowhere, avoiding campfires and elves and men with equal fear.

By then he assumed there would be a bounty on his head, and tales would be told about the faithless Elrond of Amon Ereb, corrupted to evil by the Kinslayers, a traitor and an enemy of the High King and all elves. Perhaps Gil-Galad had authorized elves to shoot him without a trial, and even now they searched for him across the vast expanses of waste in the world.

He wanted to return to Amon Ereb, he wanted to walk the dim halls and read the familiar books and look at Maglor’s harp and see Maedhros standing before the fire, his left hand wrapped contemplatively around his right hand’s stump.

But Beleriand had been washed away, so he drove himself onwards, and as at last his tears for his brother ceased, he felt the guilt of his desertion, and he contemplated hanging himself for his shame. His grief-madness washed away and was replaced by horror at his evils, and he found he could sing no Songs of Healing, or even songs of joy, because the black festering in his heart stopped up his voice.

The strangling noose could not be worse than the oppressive silence that stilled his tongue and made him grief-burdened with hatred for his deeds.

He walked into Lindon; he slipped through the lines of guards with ease enough, and he took the back ways up to the King’s palace, and he let himself in through a side door and took himself to the King’s solar, and he knelt before the fire. He was absolutely filthy, and he felt a touch of guilt for dirtying the King’s carpet with his mud-encrusted boots and filthy breeches. No doubt he smelled of the wild too, and his rank stench was overcoming the perfume of the fresh-cut reeds and roses the King kept to freshen the air.

Elrond waited many hours. He knew the King was in residence because his personal standard flew from the banners of the city, but perhaps he had ordained a holiday, and was at this very moment feasting with his noblemen. Perhaps they were appointing his successor, the elf who would execute him when he was discovered.

Perhaps, he thought, he ought to have handed himself over to a guard, but he desperately wanted to explain his absence to the King, and to assure him that he had not harmed his cause. He did not want to be branded a traitor as well as a deserter.

Elrond’s knees ached from the cold stone of the floor, and he watched the fire die and considered rising and rebuilding it, but he wanted the king to discover him kneeling, so that he would not feel threatened or alarmed. In the past, elves turned by the Enemy’s wiles had attempted assassinations or poisonings.

Evening fell, and Elrond slipped into his waking dreams, fearful things that seemed the product of fever and ill food. He realized his mouth was like linen, his tongue swollen, and his throat seemed one long, dull ache. He had no water with him.

At the start of the third watch, at last, he heard the sound of the key turning in its lock, and the King entered his chambers. He cast off his cloak, and poured himself a glass of wine. The sound of the liquid was sheer torture. He turned then, and saw Elrond, and in an instant the wine was down and a knife flashed in his hands.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“Elrond,” he responded. At once the king eased, and sheathed his knife.

“I did not think to see you,” the king said. “And no one informed me of your coming. What are you doing crouched in my solar like a kicked dog? You don’t kneel like that to me, you’re my Herald, not my captive.”

“I have come to rectify my long absence,” Elrond said. “And to apologize and face your justice, High King. I did not uphold my oath to obey you unswervingly, I followed my own will instead of yours, and I betrayed your trust. I know what the proper punishment is for my actions, and I accept it. I ask only that you believe me when I swear to you on my life, worthless though it has been made by my own actions, that I did not aid your Enemies, High King.”

“Did you get my summons?” The King asked. Elrond bowed his head.

“I did,” he said. “I received them from the hand of your messenger five seasons past.”

“Do you have them?” Gil-Galad asked. Elrond withdrew them from their place in his satchel, worn. He had toyed with tossing them into one of his fires, but instead had left them to accuse him of his faithlessness. The King took them, and opened the letter, and turned it around, and by the light of the lamp he carried, spoke aloud. “Elrond,” he read. “You are summoned to Court at Lindon by Gil-Galad, High King of the Noldor. Hasten your way to him.” Elrond felt guilt and dread drench him. His cheeks flushed from shame at his disobedience. What would Maglor say, if he knew he had raised an Oathbreaker? “You did read this, didn’t you?” The King asked.

“I did,” Elrond said.

“Then you also read what I scrawled on the back of the paper,” the King said. “I’m sorry about Elros. If you wish, you may make pilgrimage, and find peace. Return when you are ready.” Then the King crumpled up his summons, and cast the paper into the fire. Elrond leapt up with a cry, and tried to reach the fire, but his legs gave out beneath him and he tumbled to the ground, and the paper burned before his eyes.

“It did not say that!” He exclaimed. “It did not; you summoned me and I disobeyed, I betrayed you!”

“Elrond,” the King said. “Elrond, you’re not well. You’re still half-mad with grief. Elrond, here, drink this.” He held the cup of wine to his lips, and Elrond drained it. The King’s touch was cool and welcome against his fevered skin. “Cousin,” said the King. “You should be in bed.”

“Gil-Galad, you can’t not punish me!” Elrond exclaimed. “You have to execute me, I broke my vow!”

“Elrond,” Gil-Galad said. “I am the one who makes the law. I have no reason to punish you, I gave you permission to wander where you would. You’re back earlier than I expected you to be.”

“The letter said no such thing,” Elrond said. “I don’t deserve anything but death, so give me my death and let me go.”

“You will not find Elros even in death,” the king said. Elrond could not help the sob that rose up from his chest, and seemed to split it open. Tears pricked his eyes and the King embraced him, and pressed his head to his chest.

“I don’t deserve your mercy,” Elrond said, and the King held him more tightly.

“Elrond,” he said. “The thing about mercy is that if the person receiving it believes they deserve it, then it isn’t deserved at all. I can punish you if you want, I can have you whipped till your back is one large, open, oozing sore, or I can have some of your fingers lopped off, or I can demote you, or I can make you crawl through Lindon and beg my forgiveness. What good will any of that do? You’re here, you came back to me believing I would slay you. I don’t begrudge you taking time to mourn your brother. You’re home now, and I need you. Will you deprive me of my Herald?”

“No,” Elrond said. The wine had cleaned his tongue of its dryness, and his head seemed less filled with fog and fury. “I want to serve you.”

“Then, my dear friend, go get yourself cleaned up, and have a good meal, and take yourself to bed. I don’t want to see you until I send for you. We’ve got planning to do, and there’s the matter of our ambassador to Númenor. Someone is needed to attend the coronation of Amandil. Perhaps you’d be willing?”

“I would be very pleased to,” Elrond said.

“Good,” the King said. “Now obey me and be at peace.” And Elrond bowed to him, and felt his guilt loosen, and when he went out into the courtyard and saw the bright heavens, the words of an old hymn came to him and he sang softly, his eyes fixed on the brightest star of all.

————————————————————————————————-


	12. The End

The unyielding heat of the sun has half-melded his robes to his sweat-slick skin, and his hair clings lank and damp to his neck. The stone courtyard shivers with summer heat, and the haze slinks between the feet of the assembled elves, coiling serpentlike between the draped cloth of their falling robes.  
  
Beside him, Maglor is stripped to his waist, his muscles are wasted to nothing, his skin outlines the sharpness of his ribs. He bears awful wounds upon him, the scourges of his eternity spent alone, and the marks of his attempted suicides, and beneath those, the ensigns of unlucky battles. His long hair that previously gleamed black in the candlelight and streamed like a waterfall down from the crown of his head is ragged, and he has torn out clumps of it, so he seems a worn ward-doll, designed to keep harm from the true body by taking it upon the false.  
  
The High King sits in a throne shaped from a living tree. It is an old oak, gnarled and twisted with age, made pliant over hundreds of years to become the king’s seat, inlaid with gold and gems, but made most beautiful by the red leaves that droop in the windless air, and provide the King with shade. The High King is dressed in the deep blue of his House’s colors, and he wears a gold-twisted crown with a white gem pressed to his forehead. When he rises, the common people gathered in the fringes of the square bow, and the Council members, arranged in a semi-circle before him, kneel. Even Elrond’s wife kneels, even Galadriel, even King Turgon, and even Eärendil, who stands next to Elrond robed in red cloth, gleaming with Silmaril-light shining forth from his radiant face. Elrond’s knees bend of their own will before the words of the King.  
  
“It is fitting that we should conclude the trial of Kanafinwë Makalaurë, called Maglor, in the sight of the city and beneath the eyes of the Valar,” the High King says. “Our judgement of Maglor has drawn to a premature close because the prisoner has made a confession to the advocate of the state, and has expressed his desire to make the same confession to every elf in Valinor. He made this decision of his own free will, and he freely rejected the council of his own advocate. Having been advised that the penalty for the crimes which he confesses is death, Maglor has determined to yield himself to the will of the State. Lord Eärendil will advocate for the appropriate penalty when the testimony is fully given. Maglor, you may proceed.”  
  
It is painful for Elrond to watch the elf’s stumbling steps. His feet are bare, and surely the sizzling stones must blister them, but he makes no complaint. He turns towards the assembled elves, he raises his eyes, and he looks out.  
  
“It is a harsh thing to come home to your old country knowing you are a scourge to your people,” he says. His voice is rough and rasping, but his words flow easily enough, and his cadence, when mixed with the heat, is almost hypnotic. He speaks slowly, as though each word is torn from his tongue with agony. “In truth, I had no intention of coming here. I set myself adrift determined to find death from thirst, since other methods failed me. There is no place I would prefer less to see than Aman.” And although his words should have elicited loud anger, there is only silence. Elrond realizes with some surprise that he has not been breathing, he forces air into his lungs, and he fixes his gaze on the old elf. Even scarred, even maimed, even ragged and bedraggled and cursed by his long years of solitude, he draws the elves’ gazes, and his words are captivating. Elrond can remember the poetry he composed at the harp, or the lyre, or the wardrum, and the way his syllables cascaded after each other, linked by his vast skill into a strange and perfect unity no other could emulate. “I have yearned for this shore from the moment my blood-drenched foot left it, leaping lightly into a stolen boat, having made myself into a murderer and a Kinslayer. My eyes have seen every sight the Eastlands have to offer, but no matter how beautiful, each mountain, each river, each flowering tree was nothing but a mockery of the beauty and pleasure of Valinor.  
  
“Valinor, Valinor, I cursed this land and the elves who remained in it, I turned my back on the Valar, I, a murderer, I, a Kinslayer, I, who defied those I held dearest, I, who broke my Oath made to my wife, I convinced myself I hated my birthplace, and turned my back on it.  
  
“But I dreamed of Tirion. I saw her towers burning by my hand, I saw her people fleeing from my sword, I saw myself as a facet of Morgoth, and I was, I was! My pride corrupted me to the Enemy’s will, and though I opposed him, I aided his purpose. I divided the loyalties of the elves, I created strife, and thrice I raised my banners and with my brothers descended upon peaceful elves and slew them for a jewel.  
  
“I ravaged civilizations, I tore down cities, I did to Doriath what Morgoth himself willed to be done, and then I slaughtered her refugees in Sirion. I stole the twin sons of Eärendil and Elwing, and I raised them as my own children, but I did not teach them the truths of the Valar as I knew them to be. Each one of my actions has caused such suffering that I cannot stand to think of them. Each deed of mine, done in what I believed was holy righteousness, so corrupted and defiled the world that I and my kinsmen, after the Enemy and his Lieutenant, are rightly named the worst foe of the elves.  
  
“I have sought death in every corner of the world, I have tried to hang myself, I have drowned myself, I have cast myself from cliff faces, I have burned myself in fires, I have exposed myself to orcs and torment and the bitter elements, but I have not managed to sunder soul from body. At last, I have been brought to the place I dare not call home, and to those who I once gladly named my people. You seek to kill me, and you ought to. You seek my life, I gladly yield it. Let me suffer torments in Mandos, give my spirit over to the judgement of the Valar. I seek nothing from you, I dare not claim kinship with you, but I give myself to you. My life cannot restore those lives I stole, my suffering cannot ease the suffering I caused, but my death can grant those whom I wronged peace at last, and knowledge that the world is just.”  
  
There is the sound of sobbing coming from somewhere in the crowd. Elrond’s blood is gelid and his hair prickles with confusion and terror and sudden understanding. He finds to his surprise that his cheeks are wet with tears, and he sees Finarfin’s eyes too are wet, and Eärendil’s.  
  
“Lord Advocate,” the High King says. “Announce the sentence.”  
  
“Makalaurë Kanafinwë,” his father says. “Secondborn son of Fëanor, son of Finwë, First High King, you desire death for your crimes against tour people, and you acknowledge you betrayed your kin to terrible calamities. Death is the only just penalty for your actions, and death is what you deserve as a traitor and a murderer.” And Elrond knows this, he has always known this. He thinks of Maglor’s golden voice and the way he made the harp mourn, and then he thinks of the dead elves and the orphaned children. He thinks of Maglor’s hymns, his satires, his epinikia to those triumphant in the great Games, and he thinks of his own mother’s servants lying in pools of their own blood, their tongues stilled.  
  
But there is a commotion in the crowd, and from between the ranks of black-clad council members, a king with long white hair and eyes the same bright blue as his robes steps forth. He wears a crown of woven driftwood, and he has a mariner’s ruddy complexion. There are whispers, which become murmurs. Elrond knows the man, though he has never met him.  
  
“King Finarfin, let it be permitted for me to speak, though I am an outsider and do not sit on this Council, because I have a stake in these matters.” The High King dips his head to his wife’s father.  
  
“King Olwë,” he says. “You may address the assembled Court.”  
  
“I saw my fleet of swan-ships sailing eastward over Ulmo’s waves, waves reddened by the mingled blood of our kin. I saw my kinsmen lying unarmed and defenseless, I saw boys pierced through with arrows, I saw teeth smashed from a good man’s mouth by a hammer, teeth lying on the dock. I was a witness to the first great slaughter. Maglor caused much woe and grieving, and sundered our kin and divided our interests for many years. Nevertheless, I have no wish to see you slay this man. He is old, and broken, and although the stench of his crimes offends the heavens, he has no pride or joy in them. To kill him would bring no gladness to those whom he wronged. On behalf of my people, on behalf of those slain, I ask for mercy for his part in the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. We have nurtured our enmity for long enough. Let us have peace. One more death on either side of the great tally will heal no wrongs, and will only bring sorrow.”  
  
“Your words are weighty, Venerable Father,” the High King says. “But it is not this crime alone that Maglor must answer for. Even if you would forgive the tragedy at Alqualondë, there is still the ravaging of Doriath.”  
  
“There is,” Elwing says. “And, High King, I would speak to that.”  
  
“Please, my lady,” he says.  
  
“I was three years old when the sons of Fëanor fell upon my people. I have only a slight memory of my father’s face, and none at all of my mother’s. The elves I most remember from before that slaughter are my twin brothers, Eluréd and Elurín. They were only four years my senior, but we were half-elven, and so my parents bore us while they were very young, and had us close together.  
  
“I remember crying because I slipped and fell, and I remember each of them kissing my cut knee, and then squabbling with each other over who would hold me and comfort me.  
  
“That is all I remember. I do not remember my flight from Doriath, the Silmaril bound to my chest. I do not remember my mother pressing my hand into that of her loyal advisor, and I do not remember my father kissing my cheek. I do not remember being separated from my brothers, and I do not remember the fires that rose up and devoured Menegroth. I do not remember the smoke that hung low and noxious over the world for months after the slaughter. But I know of these things, because, when I was older, the refugees who wished to name me Queen told me of them, and I wept for our losses, and I mourned my family, of which I alone remained.  
  
“My parents hoped that by sending Eluréd and Elurín the opposite direction from me, they would ensure that, at least, either I or they survived. I lived, they did not. My older brothers were captured by the Sons of Fëanor in the midst of their massacre, or, rather, Celegorm found them. He handed them over to his servants, and ordered them to be taken deep into the forest, to perish by starvation for denying a Silmaril to its rightful possessor.  
  
“And so my brothers, who were but seven, who had never so much as touched a sword, who loved singing and birds and adored me, were led into the dark woods of Doriath and abandoned, and my father and mother were slain, and my people were scattered to seek refuge where they may.  
  
“But it is said that after the battle, when Maglor and Maedhros learned of Celegorm’s actions, they repented of their deeds and sought Eluréd and Elurín. They scoured the forest, crying their names, they turned all their prisoners loose to find the lost twins, but in the end they found only two thin corpses curled around each other, and they were buried in a shared tomb, and Maglor and Maedhros lamented them. Still gory with our parents’ entrails, they built a cairn for the heirs of Doriath. Despite their guilt, they bear the shame for the death of Eluréd and Elurín. They are as guilty as Celegorm, for they invaded a peaceful city, they made war upon their own blood, they did the Enemy’s work for him, and did it better than he ever managed to.  
  
“Death is a just sentence for what was done at Doriath, but Maglor’s death cannot restore my people’s lives. It was an Oath taken in pride that drove him to his deed, and he has mourned for his sins. I, daughter of Dior, son of Lúthien and king, for a short while, of Doriath, ask that mercy be shown to him. Let there be peace between our peoples at long last, and let our old angers be assuaged.”  
  
“Your words are moving, Lady Elwing,” the High King says. “And I mourn for the loss of your brothers, and your people, but even so there is the third Kinslaying to answer for.”  
  
Elrond looks to his father. He feels sweat bead on his forehead, he is stewing in his thick robes. Eärendil’s eyes are blue and gleaming. Once, Elrond could have read the thoughts hidden behind his eyes as easily as thinking his own. Then his father meets his gaze, and Elrond finds his mind open. Where there should have been the memory of murder and fire and agonized screams, there is only the gentle slap of waves on a white hull, and the sound of the wind blowing him westward. The guilt of his absence hangs like a miasma over the memory.  
  
But Elrond cannot speak for his people, he cannot advocate for Maglor and forgive him for Sirion. Maglor is not a murderer to him, he is a kind figure, a father, a nurturer. How can he cast aside Maglor’s guilt when it has always seemed hypothetical to him, less tangible than his many kindnesses? He knows enough of justice to know that this would be unjust.  
  
“I would speak to that, High King,” Eärendil says. “The Kinslayers swept down from the mountains and overwhelmed my people and slaughtered the few soldiers we had. I was absent when they came, as I often was. That was before the Sea-Road stood open, and the shores of Valinor were closed to exiles. My wife was in the highest tower when the soldiers descended, the tall spire of white stone that looked westward. I remember she used to watch the sunset and the sunrise, and pray to the Valar for deliverance. She was very young when she bore our sons, and younger still when she wed me, and her whole life she had been a ward shuffled from lord to lord, the girl who would have been the Lady of Doriath, if there yet remained a Doriath.  
  
“In the old world, I remember Lady Elwing as a woman of soft smiles and distant gazes, as untouchable as the morning mist that rises, steaming, from a swift river. She spent her days in the scriptorium, painfully copying its contents with her moderate hand. Maglor and Maedhros plundered her library, and lost many books that have never been recovered. In their carelessness they allowed the history of an entire civilization to slip into shadow. My wife’s great work was in preserving the remnants of her kin; although untrained, her mind was luminescent. There were no philosophers amongst her people, or mine. They had all been slain, or else defected to Gil-Galad. She alone stood as the stopgap of forgetfulness, of savagery, of invisibility, of poverty, of waste, loss, animalism.  
  
“There were few of any skill in Sirion, including skilled soldiers. Gil-Galad shielded us, somewhat, from the east, but we should have known our true peril lay north. The Sons came down upon my fragile town like a hammer smashes ice, and they split us open and gutted our soldiers and our women, and even then they failed to reclaim the Silmaril. My wife, Valar-inspired, bore it westward on white wings, into the aether, out to where I sailed. Instead, they found my children.  
  
“Perhaps they meant to kill them; they did not. They raised them as their sons, the children they kidnapped. They taught them to pray to gods they reviled, they gave them horses and armor, they punished them when we were wicked, they named them heirs to all their worldly wealth.  
  
“Does such a deed undo a single murder, let alone dozens? Does raising a child not your own make you any less responsible for those children whom you orphaned, or the babes you left to perish in the wilderness? Can a good deed assuage guilt? Of course not. The penalty must always be paid, the debt must always be rectified in the end. Maglor has not suffered as much as he has caused suffering, he has not compensated for his wickedness. He slew my kin for the sake of a gem, he ruined a haven and a respite from endless war.  
  
“Nevertheless, I forgive him for his unspeakable evil, because I love him, because he is my kinsman, and because I cannot hold his sin against him without hating him, and I refuse to hate. Let Maglor live, High King. Have mercy upon him.”  
  
“It would seem then that all charges against you, Lord Maglor, have been rescinded.” The High King’s face is unreadable. “But I will not welcome you into my court. You have no right to your properties, to the inheritances of your house. You lost your right to sit in our grandfather’s councils when you shed elven blood. Find a lord to take you in, swear allegiance to another’s house, and give me an oath of fealty.”  
  
“King,” Maglor says. “I do not deserve this mercy.”  
  
“No,” Finarfin says. “But when you ask, it shall be granted to you.” Maglor’s cheeks, Elrond sees, are wet with tears. The Fëanorian presses his chin to the hot stones, his matted hair falling around him.   
  
“Forgive me, Kinsman,” Maglor says, and Finarfin rises and lifts his brother to his feet and embraces him and kisses his cheeks. Maglor sinks to his knees before him, and as he speaks, he sobs.  
  
“I, Makalaurë, son of Feánaro, son of Finwë, High King of the Noldor, swear on my life my fealty to you, High King, from this day to the end of days. Your word I consider my will. I shall love you as I did my own father.”  
  
“You are forgiven,” Finarfin says. “Your crimes are forgotten. Go in peace.” And Maglor, weeping like a child, shudders with sobs while his shackles are removed. His wife takes his hand, and Elrond watches as they walk, moving slowly due to Maglor’s weakness, towards Maglor’s ancestral home. The crowd parts for them in silence. There is silence until they leave the square, and then a low murmuring. He starts when Celebrían brushes his elbow with her hand.  
  
“Dear husband,” she says. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

  
The ride back to their cottage passes swiftly. Glorfindel informed him, when he caught him in one of the many alcove-gardens, that he would be staying in Turgon’s house to oversee the extrication of Ecthelion’s Household from the king’s, and Elrond had smiled at this, and wished him well. There was to have been a feast this evening, but Elrond has only skipped High Feasts six times in the entirety of his many millennia, and this night he has no compunction about making a seventh.  
  
The stars are gleaming by the time they arrive home. The stable boy and their housekeeper are both away, so Elrond and Celebrían part to perform their duties. She rubs down the horses, he sends her hunting dog out to rouse drowsing quail, and shoots two and quickly plucks and guts them, efficiently burying them in the coals of a beach fire he starts from driftwood. His wife joins him at length, wearing a bright silver dress, the color of the moon, of her own hair. He feels he is glowing in the light cast off by her radiance. He remembers seeing her pregnant with his sons, bathed in moonlight and light reflected from a waterfall, glowing like a beacon.  
  
“How do you feel?” She asks him. He pokes a stick into the ashes, drawing and redrawing cirth, the slow ox, the sword, the spear, the medicine bowl, the lure, the ring beginning and ending his life, the syllables of his name, his true name, given him by his mother. Had she read his future in the bones or entrails of some animal, or in fire, or in the dice games, or had she simply known?  
  
“Purposeless,” he says. “Like I did when Elros died, and I realized I would live forever and never change.”  
  
“Eternity’s no simple thing to endure,” she says. “I thought I understood immortality, at least as well as I could, long before we wed. I had seen death and I knew I stood apart from it. I was silver, the rest of the word was a moonflower, blooming and perishing all in an evening. I knew my life was destined to be inconsequential and impossible to transcend, but I embraced the long ages that I saw stretching before me when I was young, and more so when I loved you and you loved me. I jealously guarded our promised years, and I rejoiced in my knowledge that neither one of us would ever grow old or perish, and I was glad nothing could change.  
  
“But then something did change. On Caradhras, making the same journey I’d made a thousand times before, the world changed and I slipped from life to unlife, and I tasted for the first time the draining corruption of the Shadow. I was violated and eternity meant suddenly something else entirely. Elrond, when I felt my soul rip open in unison with my body, life stopped being life to me, but it endured, I endured, lingering on and on, and I forgot the measurement of days or hours, and I lived more lifetimes in the weeks that I suffered than I had ever lived before. When you healed my body, you only worsened my torment, because in my spirit I could still recall each moment of my agony, and my death was removed from me. It’s not that I didn’t want to live, it’s that my life had spooled out entirely, and I was left weaving the strands of a corpse’s existence. You were my husband, but my body had borne the abuse of other men. I had my children, but within my womb was engendered a terrible offspring, a being of death instead of life. And I could not reconcile the eternal part of me with the corruption that slowly consumed me. And so I left our city, and our people, and our council, and our court, and our children, and you. And I cannot apologize, Elrond, because to stay would have meant losing myself, my own person, even though losing you was almost as bad. But I weep for our lost years, our shortchanged eternity. And I hope, Elrond, you can find some hope here, where nothing changes, and all things stay the same.”  
  
“I would not alter this moment,” he says. “But to never see Arwen again, to never embrace my brother’s kin, to be apart from the only home I ever knew, and to have no enemy or trial or greater conflict, what is the point of life without struggle? How can I define my purpose, if not in contest with others? What is a healer to heal, if there is no disease?”  
  
“Elrond,” she says. “Elrond,” and then, she says his true name, her tongue gliding over the syllables of Doriath’s long-vanished tongue. “You are a vessel never empty, a continuous blessing, an outpouring of joy. But now is not the time to give anymore. Now is the time to receive.”  
  
And Celebrían stretches her arm out, her shadow vastly elongated in the firelight, and she brushes aside his wind-loosened hair. Her fingertips prickle his skin. “I never blamed you for what happened,” she says. “From you I have only ever known good things.”  
  
“And I you,” he says.  
  
“Won’t you go to bed with me, Elrond?” She asks.  
  
“I’d like that,” he says. He rises presses his lips to hers, and inside him he feels a little flame flicker, and then expand. He pulls away from her, he douses the little beach fire with sand, and then, hand in hand, they venture up to her small cottage.  
  
She has only a few small candles burning, but the moon is full and bright enough to bathe the entire house in silver light. Her bed is a high pile of white, and he is reminded of their first time, millennia ago. She reaches for him, already drawing off her thin white dress, and she presses her lithe body to his. Her scars glimmer in the moonlight.  
  
He wraps his arms around her, as though he could sink entirely into her and become her, he finds her lips with his own, and he tastes the sweetness of her open mouth. She takes his hand and places it over her breast, and she sighs and he does not know whether the wetness on her cheeks comes from her tears or his, or perhaps both of them.  
  
The surf rises against the beach, the nightbirds scream. Elrond peers inside himself and finds a ragged shoot of hope.


End file.
